Peabody Energy Corp., one of the world’s largest coal miners, said the industry will continue to rely on China and other developing nations as the U.S. uses less.

Here’s what the St. Louis company expects for the coal market in 2012:

5 gallon water coolers are often thought of as the alternative to having a water bottle at the office or your home. Rarely do we think about the fact that those water bottles end up in the landfill eventually as well. This article represent a geat alternative to all water bottles!

Gathering around the water cooler has been a time-honored office tradition, but bottled water can be costly for your business, and can have a negative environmental impact! Those 5-gallon plastic jugs eventually end up in landfills, and bottled water services have a high carbon footprint due to the emission of fossil fuel-burning delivery trucks.

When you also consider the inconvenience of lifting new bottles onto the water cooler, storing the empty bottles at your office until the next pick-up, and spending time in the reordering process, you may be ready to consider more sustainable, convenient, and inexpensive alternatives that still provide your staff with clean, safe water: bottleless water coolers.

Bottleless coolers draw directly from your tap water supply and utilize state-of-the-art technologies, such as ultraviolet (UV) sanitation, 5-stage water filtration, and reverse osmosis filtration, to offer you the cleanest, best-tasting water available. With no bottles involved, the expense and logistics of supply and delivery are eliminated, reducing your office overhead costs while also giving your business a smaller environmental footprint. A bottleless water cooler never runs out of water, giving you a convenient, less-expensive, more eco-friendly solution without eliminating the benefit of filtered water for your employees.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently released calculations stating that the total global carbon output in 2010 was the biggest increase ever recorded. The world pumped about 564 million more tons of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6% with China, and the U.S. responsible for half the increase and India in 3rd place. According to two combined land and sea surface temperature records from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC), the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record. According to GISS, four of the six months also individually showed record highs.

There is an urgent need to decrease man carbon emissions.  Policy, practice and life style changes are tepid at best and must be exponentially increased to meet the growing challenge.

 

So What Can You Do About It?

 

As someone who now realizes the urgency of our global warming dilemma, what can you do on a personal level to help lower carbon emissions?

 

1.     Coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010. We can support government efforts to limit coal as a fuel, learn more about “clean” coal and if that is a real option, support energy development and companies moving away from coal to cleaner fuels. And limit our own consumption of energy, especially fossil fuel energy.

2.     We can support companies that use “green fuel.” This means companies that are powered by wind, solar, bio-fuels like algae and battery power. These companies often put this information on the label of their product. Buying green products including those using alternative fuels is powerful.

3.     Buy local! When things don’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach your hands, they didn’t use as much carbon emissions to get to you.

4.     If you’re not already recycling and/or composting, start now! Disposing of your trash takes energy, often fossil fuel energy.

5.     Don’t drive your car more than you have to. Group your trips taking the most efficient route and take the bus, carpool, bike or walk when you can!

6.     Turn off lights and appliances when not in use and keep the thermometer down and the air conditioning off as much as you can.

 


 

Protestors once again presented themselves around the White House on November 6^th hoping to convince President Obama to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. Nebraska has been waging its own war against TransCanada and the proposed pipeline from Alberta to Texas in recent weeks as well.

Nebraska sits on much of the Ogallala aquifer, the largest aquifer in North America. The aquifer provides about 80 percent of the states irrigation and drinking water, and the proposed route of Keystone XL passes right over this region of the state. As can be expected, there have been arguments from both sides. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman opposes the route but supports the pipeline, as he does not see a reason for the proposed route when TransCanada already has a pipeline passing through the eastern portion of the state. The northwest region of Nebraska, where the proposed pipeline will travel, is ecologically sensitive and Nebraska legislators have introduced bills that would ban any pipelines from passing through such sensitive regions. Keystone XL is estimated to carry over 700,000 barrels of oil a day over the Ogallala, and that is serious concern for many residents, and this concern is understandable. With 80 percent of the water supply, the Ogallala is a major sustainer of life, not just for humans, but crops and livestock as well. It is also under portions of neighboring states, and if it were to become contaminated, other states that rely on it would potentially see serious problems too.

With much of the gulf coast region still feeling the effects of the BP oil spill in April 2010, the question of who is to blame for this disaster is on many people’s minds. The issue may never be completely resolved, especially for those who lost family members and profits from the spill. However, there may be an answer to this question now, or at least a partial one. A report put out by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE), which is formerly known as the Minerals Management Service (MMS), and the Coast Guard, puts the blame on multiple companies. The report states that BP, Transocean, and other contractors such as Halliburton that were involved in the complete process and permitting of the Deepwater Horizon well are all to blame, according to the report. Cutting corners and changing plans last minute are mentioned as possible reasons for the blowout and explosion. There is one more critical aspect that must be examined, and it is the entire regulatory process that allowed many of these mistakes to happen in the first place.

The Obama Administration approved the Keystone XL pipeline that is slated to carry tar sands from Alberta to Texas to be refined into various forms of fuel. There were also over 1000 protestors arrested during the days the protests took place. Among them was President Obama’s chief climatologist, James Henson. The protestors were protesting that the pipeline will put our clean energy future on hold even longer, and instead of sending a message that we must harness energy from the wind and sun, it is ok to continue to get it from deep under the earth’s surface and pollute the air, water, and land that are so critical to humanity.

Jeremy Hance
August 16, 2011

Yesterday, Royal Dutch Shell estimated that to date 54,600 gallons of oil had spilled into the North Sea off the east coast of Scotland, spreading some 19 miles wide (30 kilometers) at its maximum. While the company stopped the initial leak on Thursday, it has now announced that the oil has found a 'second pathway' and is still leaking into the sea around 84 gallons a day.

The water-energy nexus is a critical aspect of sustainability that must be understood. Energy production requires water, and when energy is saved, so is water. A 2006 report released by the U.S. Department of Energy stated that 39 percent of total freshwater withdrawals in the U.S. were for energy production. This is second only to withdrawals used for agricultural irrigation, but it can be argued that energy is used in order to pump the water required to irrigate. However, for the purpose of this blog, the two categories will remain separate.

Even with the heavy requirements for water and energy, there are many ways that the water-energy nexus can be used in a way that reduces and minimizes environmental impacts. Efficiency and conservation can be practiced and are the two most affordable and immediate ways that everyone can use less energy, thus saving water. Also, renewable energy such as wind and rooftop solar can be implemented in many areas, and these two types of energy production do not require any water. They also reduce impacts by lowering demand for fossil fuel power plants, and this means less water is pulled from rivers and lakes that power plants rely on to produce electricity. This point is critical everywhere, but in regions like the Rocky Mountain West where water is scarce and population is growing rapidly, it becomes even more important. Reducing demand on power plants also means that there are fewer toxic chemicals and other harmful pollutants entering our water and air. 

With the country again facing $4-a-gallon gasoline, the time would seem ripe for a grown-up conversation on energy. What we are getting instead is a mindless rerun of the drill-baby-drill operatics of the 2008 campaign, when gas was also at $4 a gallon. Then, as now, opportunistic politicians insisted that vastly expanded oil drilling would bring relief at the pump and reduced dependence on foreign oil. Then, as now, these arguments were bogus.

As President Obama observed in a March 30 address on energy issues, drilling alone cannot possibly ensure energy independence in a country that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while owning only 2 percent of its reserves. Nor can it lower prices, except at the margins. Only coordinated measures — greater auto efficiency, alternative fuels, improved mass transit — can address these issues.

Inflammable tap water, cancer threats and earthquakes: probably coming soon, near you. Sebastian Doggart reports from New York on the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking'.

Go to your nearest tap. Light a match, and place it next to the running water. If it catches fire, as it has in many American homes, your water supply has probably been polluted by a natural-gas extraction process called fracking. If no flames appear, don’t get complacent. Fracking is becoming the gold rush of the 21st century – as well as an urgent wake-up call on the irreparable damage we are wreaking on our environment. Fracking began in Britain in March, and is probably coming to a gas reservoir near you.