In 2005, global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were 35% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. (Data courtesy of the US EPA. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The EPA recently announced that
it’s moving forward with regulations
to limit global warming pollutants
like carbon dioxide. Now, some
Senate Republicans want to stop
the EPA. Samara Freemark has that story:
Transcript
The EPA recently announced that
it’s moving forward with regulations
to limit global warming pollutants
like carbon dioxide. Now, some
Senate Republicans want to stop
the EPA. Samara Freemark has that story:
Senate Republicans say, if the country wants to regulate greenhouse gases, Congress should do it – not the EPA.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski represents Alaska. She’s drafted an amendment to put a hold on EPA greenhouse gas regulations for one year.
Critics say the amendment would strip the EPA of an important regulatory tool.
Anne Johnson is a spokesperson for Senator Murkowski. She says regulatory action from the EPA would be too broad and could hurt American businesses.
“Senator Murkowski represents Alaska. It’s ground zero for climate change. There’s no denying that. She knows that we need to do something, and she’s committed to that. At the same time, she’s committed to not harming the economy.”
Murkowski could introduce the amendment as early as this week.
Beer is mostly water, but brewing beer takes even more water. The brewing industry is working to find ways to use less water. Chuck Quirmbach reports that for some companies it’s just a matter of becoming more environmentally friendly. For other companies, future water restrictions are forcing them to think about water efficiency.
Transcript
Beer is mostly water, but brewing beer takes even more water. The brewing industry is working to find ways to use less water. Chuck Quirmbach reports that for some companies it’s just a matter of becoming more environmentally friendly. For other companies, future water restrictions are forcing them to think about water efficiency.
(ambience)
Step into a sports bar and ask a table of guys drinking beer what they think about using less water to brew beer… and you’ll probably get a lot of confused looks.
“No, I don’t think about it at all. I guess you’re the first person to ever even bring it up. that’s why i don’t even think about it (laughter)
But the brewing industry says it’s not laughing about trying to conserve water.
The industry standard is that it takes about four barrells of water to make one barrel of beer, and that’s if you don’t factor in things like the water used to grow hops and other crops used in the brewing process.
Beermaking giant Miller-Coors says it’s trying to get its water-to-beer ratio down to three-point-five to one within six years.
(ambience)
So at miller brewing’s birthplace in milwaukee. ..the firm has a research lab working on water efficiency.
“And this is a pump turning on…”
Troy Rieswek manages the testing lab.
“And it’s circulating caustic as the background…the pump…circulating caustic.”
Rhyswek is showing how Miller-Coors is testing ways to clean stainless steel brew vats with less water. He says if they can find a solution, it will help the company’s bottom line.
“So if we can save the amount of water we use…and also the amount of chemical we use. Ultimately don’t lose down the drain… that goes a long way in saving water and also wastewater sending to the sewer.”
Miller-Coors is also trying to use less water as it rinses plastic bottles before they’re filled with beer.
smaller brewing companies and even brewpubs say they’re also trying to conserve water. Brewers recently held a conference on water conservation. The event also attracted the professionally curious, like Thomas Pape.
“I kind of invited myself. I heard about this conference…and uh… I had just gone through with my beer club trying to convince steps for them to save water in their homebrewing.”
Pape is with the alliance for water efficiency. That’s a non-profit group that promotes efficient and sustainable use of water. Pape says the brewers seem serious about conservation, because water costs are rising.
“It’s still a bargain. When you think you still get water from the tap perfectly clean and treated for less than a penny a gallon, but water costs are going up, and they’re going to go up.”
At the conference, a Wisconsin state regulator told the beermakers they need to plan for new requirements for water conservation. Todd Ambs says in the Great Lakes states, where a lot of beer is brewed, a recently passed water agreement puts in tough language.
“And if you’re asking for a new or increased quantity of water out of the Great Lakes basin, and you can’t demonstrate that you’re using your current water supply efficiently, and that you’re going to use that new water supply efficiently, you won’t get the water.”
(sports bar ambience)
If the government holds to that tough line, beer makers that want to grow may have no choice but to conserve water. and that would be fine with sports bar customer Jeff King who says he does care about conservation.
“I might not be as aware of it or look into it exactly, but anything you can do to help out is definitely good.”
King says he’d even pay more for beer if a brewing company is good at conserving water as long as it’s still a quality brew.
The government’s Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to return a
certain amount of agricultural fields to their original wetlands. As Tanya
Ott reports, a new study finds those efforts might be paying off:
Transcript
The government’s Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to return a certain amount of agricultural fields to their original wetlands. As Tanya Ott reports, a new study finds those efforts might be paying off.
Research ecologist Hardin Waddle and his colleagues at the U-S Geological Survey wanted to know how frogs and toads were faring in ditches and creeks on farmland versus restored wetlands. So they suited up and set out into the Mississippi Delta on a frog hunt.
“We went out there at night with flashlights and we captured any individual we saw. We measured them and we looked for any kind of growth abnormalities or things like that.”
They didn’t find disease, but they did discover significantly more frogs and toads on the marginal farmland that had been restored to wetlands. Waddle says amphibians are great indicators of the overall health of wetland conditions. So that means restored wetlands can be just as good for frogs and toads as preserved wetlands.
When it comes to global warming,
America’s in a bind. Almost half
of our electricity comes from coal.
But, compared to other power sources,
coal produces the most carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas. Industry’s testing
so-called ‘clean coal’ technology to
deal with the problem. Shawn Allee has this update on a test
project that has some hard work
left to do:
Transcript
When it comes to global warming,
America’s in a bind. Almost half
of our electricity comes from coal.
But, compared to other power sources,
coal produces the most carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas. Industry’s testing
so-called ‘clean coal’ technology to
deal with the problem. Shawn Allee has this update on a test
project that has some hard work
left to do:
If you live outside coal-mining country, you may have missed this news about a clean-coal project in West Virginia.
“A big announcement has the state and members of the coal industry very excited about the future of the state’s most valuable resource. Good Evening, I’m April Hall…“
The fanfare’s about a company called American Electric Power. Last fall, AEP started a test that could begin a clean-coal revolution.
“The Mountaineer power plant in Mason County is going to be the first facility in the world to use carbon capture and sequestration technology to cut down on the carbon dioxide that that plant emits. AEP is hoping the implementation …“
The Mountaineer test project made headlines because there’s talk of clamping down on America’s carbon dioxide emissions. Coal produces nearly twice its own weight in carbon dioxide. So, if we could bury or sequester the stuff that would help solve the coal industry’s carbon dioxide problem. Expectations are high, but the company is keeping its cool.
“The tension we’re fighting against is the fact that you can’t go from concepts on paper to commercial scale in one step.“
Gary Spitznogle runs an engineering division for AEP, and if you think he sounds cautious, it’s because he is. Spitznogle says AEP needs to validate carbon capture and sequestration.
“Validation is kind of that intermediate step between what is truly research work and full commercial scale.“
Validation is another way of saying this technology mostly works but let’s take it for a spin. Let’s run bigger and bigger tests, so we learn more and more.
“The test is treating the amount of gas that would be coming from a 20MW generating unit, so that’s very small.“
From 20 megawatts now to two hundred fifty megawatts in a few years – that’s still less than a quarter of the power generation at the Mountaineer plant.
But what’s the point of tests like this? Well, there’s a problem with carbon capture and sequestration: it wastes coal. This waste is called parasitic load. Parasitic – as in parasite.
Spitznogle: “And because it’s taking the power it’s consuming from the generating plant that you’re controlling, it’s in a sense a parasite of that power plant.“
Allee: “Sounds kind of nefarious.“
Spitznogle: “The reason is that it’s such a focus is that, no matter what technology you look at, the number is large.“
Carbon capture and sequestration equipment need power. That adds a parasitic load of thirty percent onto a coal plant. That means it takes thirty percent more coal to generate the same amount of electricity for customers. Spitznogle needs to find out if his technology cuts that parasitic load figure. Other people hope he finds out, too.
“The overarching concern I would have today is urgency.“
Ernest Moniz runs MIT’s Energy Institute. He says if power companies don’t get a handle on parasitic load we’re in for higher utility bills. One estimate puts the cost of clean-coal power at seventy percent above today’s prices. Moniz says we need bigger tests and more of them.
“We’re pushing up against the envelope and we have to do it. If we’re going to be serious about using our extensive coal reserves in a time of carbon constraints, well, then we have to just demonstrate this technology.“
If we fail to demonstrate clean coal technology, the choices aren’t good. We’d have to abandon our cheap coal supplies or we’d burn dirty coal, then deal with the costs of climate change.
Burning fossil fuels such as
oil and coal creates carbon
dioxide. CO2 contributes
to climate change. Samara Freemark reports
some scientists say we could
capture the emissions from
smokestacks and put in in the
ground – and they think they’ve
found a good place:
Transcript
Burning fossil fuels such as
oil and coal creates carbon
dioxide. CO2 contributes
to climate change. Samara Freemark reports
some scientists say we could
capture the emissions from
smokestacks and put in in the
ground – and they think they’ve
found a good place:
It’s called carbon capture: collecting CO2 from smokestacks, liquefying it, and piping it underground for permanent storage.
A big question is exactly where to bury the carbon dioxide so it doesn’t escape.
A new study from Rutgers University says one good place might be the underwater lava formations that run all along the eastern seaboard.
Dennis Kent is one of the study’s authors. He says the formations are full of basins that could double as CO2 reservoirs. And they’re conveniently close to population centers.
“You have to get it from the power plant to wherever the reservoir is. So having it closer would be an advantage. Take the Co2 down the road somewhere and lock it away.”
The study measured the capacity of one basin off the coast of New Jersey. It found the basin could hold a gigaton of carbon dioxide- or, the amount of gas a coal-burning power plant produces in four decades.
Coal train.
(Photo courtesy of the Energy Information Administration)
When you turn on the lights,
there’s a pretty good chance
you’re burning coal. Almost
half of the nation’s electricity
comes from coal. Burning coal
causes the greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide. But, have you
ever wondered how much?
Lester Graham got a pound of
coal, and then talked to Ezra
Hausman. He’s
the Vice President of Synapse
Energy Economics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. The first question –
how long would a pound of coal
light up a hundred-watt incandescent
light bulb?:
Transcript
When you turn on the lights,
there’s a pretty good chance
you’re burning coal. Almost
half of the nation’s electricity
comes from coal. Burning coal
causes the greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide. But, have you
ever wondered how much?
Lester Graham got a pound of
coal, and then talked to Ezra
Hausman. He’s
the Vice President of Synapse
Energy Economics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. The first question –
how long would a pound of coal
light up a hundred-watt incandescent
light bulb?:
Ezra Hausman: Well, you haven’t told me where you got that pound of coal. Uh, it makes a big difference if it’s from the Appalachian region or the Western region, such as Wyoming in the United States. The Appalachian coal, Eastern coal, would burn a light bulb for about, uh, 10 or 12 hours. A pound of Western coal would only burn it for about 5 or 6 hours.
Lester Graham: There’s that much difference?
Ezra: There’s a big difference in the energy content of the coal, that’s correct.
Lester: And coal, a good portion of coal, is pure carbon. What kind of CO2 omissions would we expect from this one kind of coal?
Ezra: Well, a pound of coal is, let’s say, it’s about half carbon. So that would be a half a pound of carbon, but for every atom of carbon you add two atoms of oxygen from the air. So, you get for every 12 grams of carbon, you get 44 grams of carbon dioxide. That’s basically just how the chemistry works out when you burn carbon and oxygen; it produces carbon dioxide in that ratio.
Lester: So, this one pound of coal, would admit, by weight, more CO2 than I have in my hand here?
Ezra: That’s right; it would end up admitting about two pounds of CO2. Depending again on where the coal came from and how much carbon is in it.
Lester: Now my environmentalist friends would like to see no more coal plants built, no more coal burning power plants built, simply because of the CO2 emissions. The coal industry tells me they’re working on clean coal; there are experiments going on right now to find ways to sequester CO2 and other experiments going on how to store it underground. What do you think is the future of coal?
Ezra: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to say that there is no such thing as clean coal today. So in the first place, coal mining is an extremely environmentally damaging and dangerous process. The high volumes techniques that are now in use including strip-mining and mountain top removal have devastating consequences on mining regions. And secondly, while there are techniques in place that eliminate many of the regular pollutants such as sulfur and nitrogen from coal combustion, there is no current technology that can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted from power plants.
Lester: What do you see as the future of coal and power generation from coal in America in the future?
Ezra: Well, I think we really have no option but the phase out the use of coal for power generation over the next several decades. The problem with coal is not that each pound has so much carbon; the problem is that there is just a vast reservoir of carbon and potential carbon dioxide in the coal reserves under ground in the United States.
Ezra Hausman is Vice President of Synapse Energy Economics.
He talked with The Environment Report’s
Lester Graham.
A nugget of cadmium.
(Photo courtesy of the US Dept. of Interior)
The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is reacting to a report by the Associated Press that found 12% of children’s jewelry had high levels of cadmium. Some of the pieces tested were almost completely made of cadmium. The heavy metal can cause kidney disease and it’s known to cause cancer.
Scott Wolfson is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He says that because of all the problems with lead in toy jewelry – the bottom line is that parents should just stay away.
“Over the past four years, we have done more than 50 recalls of more than 180 million units of jewelry. That’s astounding. It reached a point, where CPSC has been recommending to parents that they stop buying children’s metal jewelry for the youngest of kids.”
And some experts say – if you’ve got old toy jewelry in the house – it’s probably a good idea to get rid of it.
Scientists say this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before.
(Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)
You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:
Transcript
You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:
Virginia Walbot researches corn genetics at Stanford University, and recently she got news that didn’t just make her day – it kinda made her decade. Walbot says scientists just finished sequencing genes of an important corn genome.
“The genes are like the words in different languages and what you need is a dictionary that lists all those words, and that dictionary for us, is the genome sequence.“
Walbot says this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before. That’s a big deal because even though we benefit from corn we have now, we could make it better. For example, corn creates environmental problems – take corn fertilizer.
“Of course, adding fertilizer really boosts a lot of yield, but the downstream effects aren’t really great. So, there’s runoff from farms that contaminates the water supply. Making corn as efficient as possible and just giving enough fertilizer to sustain yields, those would be fantastic goals.“
Now, most corn researchers want to meet environmental goals, but there’s a question science alone can’t answer – what kinds of corn should we grow or improve?
Kinds of corn? Maybe you’re thinkin’ “corn chips” versus “popcorn” but there’re bigger differences. We eat sweet corn – most corn’s starchy industrial stuff.
“I think that’s one thing consumers get confused about. Today, only one percent of corn production goes into sweet corn.“
That’s Pam Johnson. She’s with the National Corn Growers Association. Johnson says about half our corn goes to animal feed, then we eat the meat or dairy products from that.
But a lot goes to industrial products, too. Ethanol uses more than a third of the corn in the American corn market.
Johnson says corn farmers want scientists to create specialty industrial corn that can fetch premium prices – like corn just for ethanol or corn just for renewable, corn-based plastic.
“You know, we’ve always said for a long time that anything that’s made from petroleum might be able to be made from a renewable and I think that’s an exciting thing to ponder as a corn grower.“
Johnson predicts new genetic science will also improve corn we eat directly, but is that likely to happen?
“I have my doubts.“
That’s Rainer Bussman. He’s with The Missouri Botanical Garden, and he studies how people use plants.
“Feeding people is less economic incentive than producing large amounts of corn for animal feed or biofuels, so I do have my doubts there.“
Bussman says it’s a shame food varieties of corn will get less attention from genetic research. He says he worries about food security. He figures if we grow more types of food corn we’ll be better protected from crop diseases.
It’s also a matter of taste, though. Bussman’s traveled the world and tasted corn we don’t grow here – like a blue kind in South America.
“They would call that maize murada which means purple corn and that is mostly used to produce a very refreshing, sweet beverage, so you get this get this deeply purple, sugary drink. It’s all natural, no sugar added.“
Bussman says Native Americans and the earliest settlers produced hundreds of varieties of corn for all kinds of food dishes – corn for just pudding, just bread, just porridge, and so on. They created this food diversity without modern genetic science, but we do have it.
Bussman asks why should our science just improve animal feed, ethanol, and bio-plastic? Why not make food our priority, too?
Last year in Alabama, timber thieves stole more than a half million dollars
worth of trees.
(Photo by Randolph Femmer, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)
The construction slump has meant
less demand for two-by-fours, but
trees are still worth big bucks.
An individual tree can be worth
anywhere from a hundred dollars
to thousands. And Tanya Ott reports timber theft is up
because of the economy:
Transcript
The construction slump has meant
less demand for two-by-fours, but
trees are still worth big bucks.
An individual tree can be worth
anywhere from a hundred dollars
to thousands. And Tanya Ott reports timber theft is up
because of the economy:
(sound of timber truck)
Timber is an important revenue stream for some areas. But from New York to
Washington State, forest managers say timber thieves have been pretty
active. Last year in Alabama, they stole more than a half million dollars
worth of trees.
State forester Linda Casey says landowners might have
earmarked that money to pay off the mortgage or send their kids to college.
“If they have timber stolen they just lost the only chance that
they have to achieve whatever goal that they had designated to use this
money for.”
Foresters say reckless timber thieves also damage wildlife habitats.
States
are cracking down. This month, Alabama will decide on tough new rules that
would make it a misdemeanor to even step on private forest land without
permission.
So every year, dozens of homes are flooded. That's in part because 28% of the entire watershed in this region around Washington DC is paved over.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
With federal Recovery Act money, the town is rebuilding its main street from top to bottom.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
One component of the construction are bio-retention tree boxes - native trees grown in gravel and compost to absorb and filter water.
(Photo by Sabri Ben-Achour)
Stormwater runoff can be one
of the main ways that urban
areas create pollution. In
some cases it can dramatically
suffocate marine life. It
can also cause flooding. One
small town in Maryland is on
the receiving end of its region’s
runoff. As Sabri Ben-Achour reports,
it’s trying to set a national
example with its approach to
solving the problem:
Transcript
Stormwater runoff can be one
of the main ways that urban
areas create pollution. In
some cases it can dramatically
suffocate marine life. It
can also cause flooding. One
small town in Maryland is on
the receiving end of its region’s
runoff. As Sabri Ben-Achour reports,
it’s trying to set a national
example with its approach to
solving the problem:
Anytime it rains, the ground in Edmonston, Maryland quickly becomes waterlogged. Here’s Brigitte Pooley and her mother Maggie.
“When the river gets flooded with rainwater, for example, if it continued raining like this, it literally comes up all over, and then all the debris that comes from upstream, municipalities upstream, as the water recedes it just leaves milk cartons and trash, tires everywhere.”
Adam Ortiz is the mayor of this low income, low-lying town of 1400. He says his town is a trap for stormwater runoff from all the paved surfaces in the area.
“At least 30 to 56 homes would be under water at least once a year because of flooding from parking lots, highways, shopping centers and streets.”
So every year, dozens of homes are flooded. That’s in part because 28% of the entire watershed in this region around Washington DC is paved over. But flooding isn’t the whole story.
“If a watershed is more than 10% paved you’re going to have impaired water quality.”
Jim Connolly is Executive Director of the Anacostia Watershed Society. He says stormwater smothers or poisons aquatic life, and causes erosion.
“It’s all the oil or grease that comes out of cars, the trash we throw in the streets, the pesticides we use in our lives. Stormwater is the base cause of all the problems in our urban rivers.”
So the town of Edmonston decided to do something about it. A new pumping station is keeping floods down, but the town wants to be a model for how to prevent stormwater runoff in the first place. So with federal Recovery Act money, the town is rebuilding its main street from top to bottom. Mayor Ortiz sidesteps a bulldozer to show off what’s now a construction site on the roadside.
“This is a bio-retention treebox, so instead of the water going directly into the drains and into the river, it will go directly into this bed.”
In that bed will go native trees grown in gravel and compost – to absorb and filter water. The street itself is going to be repaved with permeable concrete to let some water pass right through.
“The water’s going to filter naturally into the water table, so everything will be taken care of onsite as it was a few hundred years ago.”
85-90% of run off will be trapped by this system. But what about cost? Dominique Lueckenhoff directs the Office of State and Watershed Partnerships for this region at the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It is not more costly with regards to the refurbishing and additional greening of this street.”
But this wouldn’t have happened had this community not organized to fight for it. Allen Hance is with the Chesapeake Bay Trust. He says that to have a major impact, many more communities will have to follow Edmonston’s example.
“We want this to become a matter of course in how people build streets, and how they design streets.”
Edmonston will be putting all of its designs, and experiences online for other communities to use as a blueprint.
In 2005, global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were 35% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. (Data courtesy of the US EPA. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
