This article is not in reference to the St. Patrick’s tradition of dying your beer green, but instead a round of applause for the New Belgium Brewing company for its efforts to make their beer as eco-friendly as possible. A Popular Mechanics article describes their energy recycling process,

In the brew house, heat typically released as steam preheats incoming water. Temperature sensors automatically open windows to cool the building. Methane gas from an on-site wastewater treatment facility is piped to a generator, which produces enough electricity to cover 10 percent of the brewery’s needs. New Belgium purchases the remainder of its electricity from wind farms, and offsets some of its CO2 emissions by purchasing renewable energy credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. But according to New Belgium’s sustainability specialist, Nicolas Theisen, there is always room for improvement. “We’re a partner in developing a process to use the carbon dioxide byproduct from fermentation to feed fast-growing algae in silo-shaped bioreactors,” he says. “The oil in the algae can be pressed to make biodiesel, and the rest can go into our waste treatment ponds to make methane.

The New Belgium Brewing company produces the delicious Fat Tire Ale which proudly features a bicycle on the front of the bottle. In support of cyclists everywhere, the company launched two a social action campaigns to encourage the use of bicycles in the daily commute. These two campaigns are “Team Wonder Bike” which asks members to take a pledge to ride their bicycle whenever possible, as well as the “Tour De Fat” a nationwide community cycling campaign to raise money for local charities throughout the Western United States. So if you love the earth, and you love beer, takepart and choose a brewery that strives and inspires social change for the betterment of all of us.

Oceana reported today that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which are absorbed by the oceans could lead to an accelerated deterioration of coral reefs.  Heightened levels of CO2 raise acidity levels in the ocean, creating an unhealthy environment for coral life, and threatens to create a domino effect on the fragile oceanic ecosystem that relies on it. Oceana explains:

The process, which is known as ocean acidification, reduces the ability of marine animals such as corals, crabs, lobsters, clams and oysters to create calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, which will likely reduce their survival rates, and their ability to mature and reproduce.

Acidification deteriorates the shells and skeletons of marine animals, and if the levels continue to rise could corrode them completely.  If this were to happen on a widespread scale, we could lose the important barrier that coral provides our shores as well as the larger marine life we depend upon for food.

The only way to decrease ocean acidification is to reduce the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we release into the air.
takepart by helping Oceana reduce our carbon emissions.

Related: Inconvenient Truth of the Day

An Answer to Global Warming?

A team of scientists from Columbia University have discovered that the mineral peridotite absorbs carbon dioxide. When CO2 comes into contact with the rock it is converted into a solid mineral (often calcite).

The findings could have an enormous impact on the fight against Global Warming the world over. The geologists that discovered the naturally occurring process have also found that it can be supercharged by a million times to convert carbon dioxide into minerals deep underground, which is convenient as the majority of peridotite is found deep within the crust of the Earth, where it is actually the most commonly occurring mineral in the mantle of our planet. Preliminary estimates find that approximately 7% of all the CO2 emitted on earth due to human activity, could be safely stored by using such method.

It stands to reason that in order to realistically deal with a problem as large as Global Warming a variety of strategies will be required. While cutting down on fossel fuel consumption and saving energy are unquestionably cornerstones in building a sustainable future, CO2 reduction strategies like the one described above should be given serious consideration as well.

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Oh, because one buzzkill wasn’t enough for you today, I figured that I’d go ahead and let you know that levels of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, rose sharply last year for the first time in a decade. And the best part, the absolute clincher, is that scientists have no idea why that happened.

There is considerably less methane than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pre-industrial concentrations of methane were about 700 parts per billion — that is, for every billion molecules of air, there were only 700 of methane — but that level rose gradually to 1773 parts per billion by the late 20th century…The rise in 2007 was about 10 parts per billion over the course of a year, a real jump for such a short period of time.

Reuters reports that though methane levels have more than doubled since pre-industrial times (so let’s call that 125 years, give or take a decade), the levels had been pretty constant for some time. And they’re pretty well stumped about this new development.

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Houston has joined Los Angeles in being classified as having a severe smog problem by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). LA and Houston, America’s second largest and fourth largest cities, respectively, are the only such areas in the country to be so designated by the EPA.

The reclassfication of Houston is a bit of a bureaucratic tango however between the State of Texas and the, frighteningly, still Bush-controlled EPA.  Texas Governor Rick Perry had essentially run out of time to improve the air quality of Houston based on a 1997 assessment by the EPA which at the time ranked Texas’ biggest city as having “moderate” air quality, but is today considered unsafe for public health.   So Perry petitioned the EPA to reclassify the city as severe, which under EPA rules would give the state another 10 years in order to improve its air quality.  

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Ben & Jerry’s and Greenpeace have teamed up to bring America its first Cleaner, Greener Freezer. Refrigerators and freezers have an enormous impact on Global Warming through their use of harmful Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and other harmful gases, known collectively as F-gases. Cumulatively, F-Gases account for nearly one fifth of the global warming pollution spewed into our atmosphere. Worse yet, HFCs pollution has much more staying power in the atmosphere than Carbon Dioxide (CO2), causing nearly 1400 times the damage CO2 does when measured over 100 years periods.

Greenpeace has long promoted hydrocarbon as a natural, environmentally friendly substance to replace HFCs as the cooling element in refrigeration units. The organization has made great headway with hydrocarbon in both the European and Asian markets and is now spearheading the use of the new technology in the United States in partnership with those environmentally conscious ice cream merchants, Ben & Jerry’s. The freezers are currently in test use in Ben & Jerry’s retail ice cream shops in the Washington DC, Vermont and Boston areas, while the company seeks EPA approval to spread the technology far & wide. Once EPA approval is attained Ben & Jerry’s will share the technology with the ultimate goal of making Hydrocarbon freezer and refrigeration units the standard in the United States.

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The Associated Press via MSNBC (or is it the other way around?) announced yesterday the results of the first ever carbon cap-and-trade auction in the United States, which took place last Thursday, and raised $38.5 million.   The byline of the article is Albany, New York, so I’m going to go ahead and say that’s where the auction took place.

The money raised will be filtered back to the ten states that took part in the auction, to be spent on renewable energies and technologies.   Financially speaking, the auction was a success, as

Energy, financial and environmental interests paid $3.07 per allotted ton of emissions, about 65 percent more than the minimum set price of $1.86.

Though this is the very first auction of its type in the United States, but there are plans to make these quarterly events, the next of which is to be held December 17.  I’m almost positive there was a better way to word that last clause, but I’m going to just let it go.

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Who’s ready for their Friday buzzkill?  Okay, good.   Your Friday Unfun Fact today comes from the Washington Post, which reports that carbon is building up in the atmosphere faster than anyone predicted, including researchers’ “most dire predictions.”  Sweet!

The 2007 levels of carbon in the atmosphere were 2.9 percent higher than they were in 2006, according the the Global Carbon Project based in Australia (that’s the one with kangaroos, not the one with skiing).   These higher levels of output could, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, result in global temperatures being 11 degrees higher by century-end if nothing is done to reverse the trend.

Oh, but it gets better!

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willyoujoinus.com is a website that urges you to save gas and conserve energy coming from a place you might not expect it - Chevron.

The site, which has a counter showing you how many barrels of gas have been consumed around the globe since you arrived at the site (I’m over 770,000 already), has an interactive energy generator calculator that shows you how to “do more with less.”  And, starting tomorrow, there will be an MPG Optimizer to learn how to “drive smarter” to save gas.

Perhaps most interesting is the Energyville game, which is SimCity-styled and puts you in charge of the energy resources of an entire city.   You get to decide how your city reaches full power, and the risks and rewards that go along with it.

Of course, Chevron isn’t only telling you how you can stop buying their gas - they’re telling you what the company is doing to become more efficient, how they’re embracing solar power, and so forth.   They’ve also compiled a section of important energy issues, so you can better educate yourself about the problems facing us going forward, and some viable solutions.

So, shiny graphics and fun games aside, what do we think?

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The AP reports that researchers at Ohio State University found that eggshells can help produce hydrogen for fuel cells that mix the gas with oxygen to create energy for running a vehicle. And instead of exhaust, only water vapor is emitted.

The current process for obtaining hydrogen also produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is linked to climate change. But when eggshells are added to the process, they help absorb the Co2.

Hungry for change? Eggsactly!

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