Tag: power plant

Geothermal at Home

  • Swimmers in Iceland enjoy the toasty Blue Lagoon hot springs. (Photo by Kurt Holtz)

You might be hearing about geothermal energy more and more. But what exactly is geothermal energy? The new federal Energy Act calls for more research and investment into the alternative energy source. Robbie Harris has more on this long used, but little known technology, for tapping the earth’s heat:

Transcript

You might be hearing about geothermal energy more and more. But what exactly is geothermal energy? The new federal Energy Act calls for more research and investment into the alternative energy source. Robbie Harris has more on this long used, but little known technology, for tapping the earth’s heat:


(“Now look at that!” “Wow!”)


(whooshing of geyser)


In Iceland, where geysers gush from the ground and steam rises from the bays, geothermal is the number one source of energy. This island nation in the north Atlantic burns virtually no fossil fuel to heat or cool its buildings.


“You will probably not see a building that is not heated by geothermal
energy during your visit here.”


Pall Valdimarsson is Director of Research and Development with Enix. It’s Iceland’s largest geothermal consulting firm.


“And I myself, I have never lived in a house in Iceland without geothermal
energy, not in my whole life and I am not the youngest one as you can see.”


Valdimarsson says Iceland has used a special technology to tap earth-generated heat since the 1930s. And why not? It’s everywhere on this volcanic island. The first settlers here in the eighth century saw what they called “smoke” rising from the hot springs.


Today, steam blasts from hot water wells at Iceland’s newest, state of the art geothermal plant. The steam spins turbines to make electricity. The superheated water is piped directly into buildings where it gives up its heat. This heat exchange is the core concept behind geothermal technology.


Hans Bennimidgel is a spokesman for the power plant. He says the benefits for Iceland are simple:


“Clean energy and dirt cheap.”


Few places have the hot water resources Iceland has. But according to the Geothermal Resource Council, superheated water is available virtually anywhere in the world, if you drill deep enough.


The U.S. already taps this underground hot water to produce more geothermal electricity than Iceland does. And that’s expected to grow sharply, but for decades Americans have also used a different form of geothermal energy to heat
and cool buildings.


Erik Larson is a vice-president of Indie Energy. He calls it the other geothermal, which is, basically:


“Free heat from the earth and an extremely efficient way to eject heat from
the building in the summer time.”


Larson says geothermal, or geo-exchange systems, are comparable to traditional
heating, ventilation and cooling systems. But they use the earth’s constant underground temperature — around 55 degrees in most of the U.S. — to take the edge off a building’s heating and cooling load:


“Geothermal heat pump technology like we’re talking about can be done
anywhere in the country. Anywhere where there is ground to drill we can
put in our closed loop wells to draw heat from the earth to provide an HVAC
system.”


For a long time in rural areas, large horizontal loops several feet
underground captured and released heat. But in urban areas, there wasn’t
enough land. Now Larson says Indie Energy uses a new drilling technique
known as a vertical closed loop system. He says they can be installed under
almost any building. Pipes inside wells hold a fluid, which continuously
circulates between the ground and the building — creating a heat exchange.
Larson says a geothermal system saves owners money:


“We are a system that you would fully own through the ground loops or these
wells that we put in…through the distribution which is basically happening
within your building. So it adds value to your property, you control it and you
take advantage of all the savings.”


Larson says geothermal systems for buildings cost anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more than a typical heating, cooling, and ventilation system. But he says, most pay for themselves in five to eight years with the energy savings.


Business is booming. Larson says Indie Energy plans to expand in two new locations this year. Four months ago, they installed a large geothermal system at Boocoo Community Center in Evanston, Illinois. During the installation, they helped train new workers in geothermal technology. It was a joint project between Indie Energy and Boocoo. They’re training workers for a new green industry they hope will not only save resources, but create new jobs.


(Sound of hammers in Community Center)


For the Environment Report, I’m Robbie Harris.

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Great Lakes Record Lows

  • Lower water levels on the Great Lakes make some channels such as the Muskegon River too shallow for big freighters to enter fully loaded. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The Great Lakes are hitting new record low water levels. The water is so low that
big 1000-foot cargo ships are running aground. There’s debate about
whether this is just part of the historic ups and downs of the Great Lakes, or if it’s the
effects of global warming. Lester Graham reports from Lake Michigan’s Muskegon
River, a trouble spot for some of the big ships:

Transcript

The Great Lakes are hitting new record low water levels. The water is so low that
big 1000-foot cargo ships are running aground. There’s debate about
whether this is just part of the historic ups and downs of the Great Lakes, or if it’s the
effects of global warming. Lester Graham reports from Lake Michigan’s Muskegon
River, a trouble spot for some of the big ships:


Here at the end of the pier next to the lighthouse, it’s cold, it’s icy and it’s windy. And
it’s hard to imagine a ship navigating its way into this channel, but ships do on a
regular basis to bring coal to a power plant. This year, however, some of the ships
have ended up aground here simply because of lower lake levels and more sediment
in the channel:


“There’s been three this summer here in Muskegon. They go hard up on the sand.”


Dennis Donahue is the marine superintendent for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Lake Michigan field station at Muskegon, Michigan. He
says this year’s groundings of cargo ships just hasn’t happened that often in the
past:


“Well, we haven’t had a grounding here, certainly in the last 15 years due to water
levels.”


Lester Graham: “So what’s happening here? What’s going on?”


Donahue: “Well, there’s a couple of things, we’ve got the water levels dropping and
then we’ve got some weather patterns that are carrying sediment to the mouth of the
Muskegon River. So, those two compound and create shoal areas.”


So lower water and a rising bottom mean channels are more shallow. That means
ships have to carry less cargo, and that costs the shippers reportedly a million
dollars per ship per year.


Scientists have been monitoring the dropping lake levels for close to a decade now.
At NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, Deputy Director Cynthia
Sellinger says she’s been seeing a trend in the weather that’s causing the problem:


“We’re having a lot less precipitation and a lot more evaporation. And that’s
impacting the water levels on the lake.”


Less snow pack and rain mean less water filling the lakes, and with warmer winters
Sellinger says there’s less ice cover to protect the lakes from massive evaporation.
Historically, about 50% of the lakes’ surfaces have been covered by ice. These
days, it’s more like ten to 20%. Cold air hits the warmer water and
carries it away. For Lake Superior alone, a one-inch drop is more than 500 billion
gallons. During the past decade, Superior has lost nearly 13 trillion gallons.


“The upper lakes, Superior, Michigan and Huron, are very close to their record low.
So, it’s approaching an extreme. Superior reached its record low in 1926 and just
this year it broke the record low for September. So, 2007 now is a new record low
for Lake Superior. Lakes Michigan and Huron are approaching their record low.”


Sellinger and her colleagues are not ready to say global warming is causing the
lower lake levels. It might just be a part of a long cycle of ups and downs of the lakes.
But the lower water levels do fit some of the computer model predictions about
global warming.


Lower lake levels causing problems for big cargo ships and marinas catering to
recreational boaters are problems enough. But, some environmentalists say if lower
water levels are caused by global warming, the pressures on the water in the Great
Lakes likely are going to get a lot worse. Andy Buchsbaum heads up the National
Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office:


“The hidden threat of global warming is that not only does it affect Great Lakes water
levels simply because of increased evaporation or increased temperatures changes
precipitation, but the threat it makes to Great Lakes water levels is even greater.
Because global warming, global climate change, is having massive effects already
and is likely to have even greater effects on water supplies in the Southwest, the
Southeast and all over the country. And as those pressures increase, the pressure
to divert Great Lakes water will increase exponentially.”


We don’t know whether new diversions to dry areas of the country could cause as
much of a problem as less precipitation and more evaporation of the Great Lakes
already do. But, it would certainly aggravate the problem. The effects of water
levels dropping further mean more economic hardship for shipping and tourism. And
environmentalists say ecological damage to coastal habitat that fish and other
wildlife need to survive could be on a scale that’s not been seen on the Great Lakes
in recorded history.


For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Searching for New Bio-Diesel Source

The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:

Transcript

The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:


Bio-diesel is made primarily from plant oils: soybean, canola, rapeseed. Ihab Farag
is a chemical engineering professor at the University of New Hampshire. He climbs
up scaffolding to demonstrate a processor that turns waste oil from the University’s
cafeteria into bio-diesel. Farag says this is more environmentally-friendly than diesel:


“It’s coming from vegetable oil, so therefore it’s cleaner… it doesn’t have the sulfur in it so you
don’t get acid rain issue that you get from diesel, it doesn’t do particulates which are suspect[ed] to be cancer-
causing.”


Almost any diesel engine built in the last 15 years can use bio-diesel, but Farag says
there’s a major drawback: it takes an acre of most crops to produce only 100 gallons
of bio-diesel per year:


“I think it has been estimated that if we are using just something like soybean[s] and want to
produce bio-diesel for the whole country, we need almost an area of land that’s about
two and a half to three times the area of Texas.”


That would be an environmental nightmare because bio-fuels require a lot of fossil
fuels to plant, harvest and process them. They only produce a bit more energy than
the energy needed to make them. It also would put the nation’s fuel needs in conflict
with its food needs. That could drive the price of both sky-high.


So Farag and Master Chemical Engineering student Justin Ferrentino are looking at
another plant. One that’s capable of producing much more oil : algae.
Inside the University’s bio-diesel lab, Ferrentino holds up a glass jar filled with a sea-
green powder:


“This is freeze-dried cells that we’ve grown up in our photo-bioreactor.”


He’s testing different ways of extracting oil from these single-celled algae plants to
produce the most bio-diesel:


“People have projected with micro-algae you can grow somewhere between five and 15,000
gallons per acre per year, so it’s a big difference.”


Compared to 100 gallons per acre of soybeans, it’s a very big difference. Ferrentino
has built a contraption of two small fiberglass tanks, surrounded by florescent lights
and reflectors. It’s called a photo-bioreactor. With the right amount of light, the algae
here grows rapidly:


“When I fill these with growth medium and then add the cells to them and they just
multiply, they divide… they double every ten to 15 hours, when they’re growing
exponentially.”


The more cells, the more oil, and the more bio-diesel. Ferrentino’s photo-bioreactor
is small, producing only a tenth of a gram of bio-diesel. But build one on a larger
scale where there’s lots of sunlight, like the desert Southwest, and it could potentially
produce thousands of gallons on just an acre of land.


And Farag says because carbon is needed to fertilize algae growth, the potential
exists to remove greenhouse gases while simultaneously producing bio-diesel:


“If we can connect it with a wastewater treatment plant, where they have a lot of
waste coming in with lots of carbon in it then you can consume the carbon to grow
the algae and at the same time clean up the wastewater.”


But skeptics say one of the biggest challenges is making algae production
economical. Commercial production would initially yield fuel that could cost between
20 and 50 dollars a gallon. Ferrentino recognizes the drawbacks, but says their
research is worth pursuing:


“I think that our energy needs are not necessarily going to be solved with a magic
bullet, but I think this is certainly one part of it, being that you don’t need arable land
you have the added benefit of maybe being able to use the carbon from flue gases
from power plants, maybe being able to treat wastewater. So, it has some significant
added benefits so it could be one piece of the energy picture.”


But growing algae in the desert or anywhere else doesn’t have the kind of political
appeal that subsidizing farmers to grow soybeans for soy-diesel does. So finding
funding for a commercial-sized algae bio-reactor will face significant obstacles.


For the Environment Report, I’m Amy Quinton.

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Polluters Pay Less Under Bush

  • A new report concludes that under the Bush Administration, polluters are less likely to be taken to court. (Photo by Shealah Craighead, courtesy of the White House)

The Bush Administration is not punishing polluters as much. That’s according to a new
report issued by a group of former Environmental Protection Agency attorneys. Mark
Brush reports:

Transcript

The Bush Administration is not punishing polluters as much. That’s according to a new
report issued by a group of former Environmental Protection Agency attorneys. Mark
Brush reports:


The report concludes that under the Bush Administration, polluters are less likely to be
taken to court. They’re less likely to be investigated. And they’re less likely to pay civil
or criminal penalties when compared to the Clinton Administration. Eric Schaeffer is the
director of the Environmental Integrity Project, the group that released the report. As an
example of lax enforcement, he says the EPA often takes no action when power
companies pollute:


“I think power plants routinely violate particulate matter standards. They exceed opacity
requirements. They are even in some cases blowing stack tests, which are really hard to
fail, and you just don’t see much response.”


An EPA spokesman says they’re committed to holding polluters accountable. As proof,
he says they’ve reached a record number of settlements in the last three years that force
companies to clean up.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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End of the Internal Combustion Engine

  • Fuel cell-powered cars will be much simpler and cheaper to build than internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

Hydrogen fuel cells have been billed as the next big thing for cutting
down on vehicle emissions. Cars that run on these fuel cells emit only
water. Automakers are investing heavily in the technology, and there
are still some major obstacles. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, there is
at least one big advantage for automakers to push fuel cells:

Transcript

Hydrogen fuel cells have been billed as the next big thing for cutting
down on vehicle emissions. Cars that run on these fuel cells emit only
water. Automakers are investing heavily in the technology, and there
are still some major obstacles. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, there is
at least one big advantage for automakers to push fuel cells:


Of course, automakers want to be seen working on something that could
be good for the environment, and people in the industry will tell you
there are a number of reasons for pushing fuel cells. But there’s one
reason that might matter more than all the others.


(Sound of music…”money, money, money”)


Yep, money.


And if you don’t believe ABBA, you can just take it from Larry Burns.
He’s the head of research and development at General Motors. GM says
it’s spent more than a billion dollars developing fuel cell technology.
That’s money a company like GM can’t afford to waste.


At a recent energy symposium, Burns broke it all down, and talked about
the real reason GM is involved in the technology:


“First of all, we want to accelerate industry growth, for business
reasons. In fact, if I was up here telling you we were doing it for
reasons other than business reasons, you shouldn’t take me sincerely.”


So, what are those business reasons?


For Larry Burns it starts with the fact that today only 12 percent of
people worldwide own a car. To get the other 88 percent, Burns says
future vehicles need to be cheap and clean.


Some will debate whether hydrogen vehicles would truly be clean. They
say, at best, hydrogen just shifts the pollution upstream to the power
plant.


As for the cheap part, that’s also a problem. Right now, prototype fuel
cell cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. But fuel cells
have a few things going for them on the cost front. Take Ford’s new
HySeries Drive Hybrid Edge prototype.


Engineer Mujeeb Ijaz looks under the hood:


“So I guess the first thing you’ll notice when you look under the hood
of the Edge is it doesn’t have a lot of equipment here. In fact, it’s
quite empty.”


It’s empty because all the important stuff, including the fuel cell, is
tucked in a sleek package hidden underneath the vehicle.


The fuel cell itself is only about six inches high, and about as big
around as a coffee table. That’s an incredibly simple design compared
to today’s complicated and clunky internal combustion engines:


“There’s a lot of technology that goes into it, but from a fundamental
standpoint, when you lay out a fuel cell and you lay out an engine,
we’re not dealing with a lot of unique parts.”


So, unlike an engine that has to be machined and assembled in different
ways for most vehicles around the world, a fuel cell only has a few
parts that get stacked together the same way every time. That means
once they ramp up to mass production, fuel cells could save automakers
a lot of, well…


(Sound of music…”money, it’s a gas”)


But before automakers can save all that fuel cell money, they still
have to answer all the questions about where the hydrogen itself comes
from, how to get it into gas stations, and how to store it in the
vehicle.


Automakers say they can make it work. But not everyone agrees. Joseph
Romm is an expert on energy issues, and he says, a lot of the problems
with hydrogen fuel cells might be out of automakers’ hands:


“Each of them probably requires a major technology breakthrough, and
you just don’t know. You might see a breakthrough in five years, you
might not see a breakthrough for fifty years.”


Romm wrote a book called The Hype About Hydrogen. He says fuel
cells have long been thought to be just over the horizon:


“Fuel cells are always just 10 or 20 years away, and so it allows the
car company to seem like they’re doing something for the environment,
without actually having to do anything.”


Romm says he’d bet on better battery technology and biofuels to cut
down on gas use.


Regardless of who’s right, what’s clear is that the auto industry could
be on the verge of a revolutionary change, one that could be good news
for the environment: the end of the internal combustion engine.


It won’t happen just to make people feel good, or to save the
environment.


It’ll happen for a reason you can bank on.


(Music)


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Using Energy More Efficiently

  • The Sappi paper mill in Cloquet Minnesota produces most of the electricity it needs, using steam that also powers the industrial process. Sappi can even sell power when demand is high. Electric co-generation is enjoying a come-back. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

More and mores states are establishing a “renewable energy standard”
for their electric utilities. So far, wind power is producing the bulk
of renewable energy. But there are other sources. Some are brand new.
Others have been around for a long time. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

More and mores states are establishing a “renewable energy standard”
for their electric utilities. So far, wind power is producing the bulk
of renewable energy. But there are other sources. Some are brand new.
Others have been around for a long time. Stephanie Hemphill reports:


The first thing to know about electricity is that making it can be
incredibly inefficient.


In a conventional power plant, burning fuel turns water into steam.
The steam drives a turbine, which spins the generator. Only about a
third of the energy in the original fuel is converted to electricity.
Two thirds goes up the smokestack in the form of heat.


“Every time you convert energy from one form to another, you lose
something. That’s just the way it is, ’cause nothing’s perfect.”


Dwight Anderson works for Minnesota Power. He’s lived with that
inefficiency for his whole working life. Now, he’s trying to wring
more electric power out of every bit of fuel.


He’s high on something called co-generation. The basic idea is to
harness the heat or steam that normally goes up the smokestack.
There’s a good example of co-generation at the Sappi paper mill in
Cloquet, in northern Minnesota. Like many paper mills, Sappi makes
most of the electricity it needs.


Engineering Manager Rick Morgan points to a mountain of wood chips:


“We have about 20,000 tons of biomass stored.”


That’ll last less than a month. The plant uses 53,000 watts, enough to
power a small city.


Inside the sprawling buildings, there are several electric generators.
One of them is fueled by a recovery boiler, which burns the byproducts
of the paper-making process, to run steam through a turbine.


“…The actual turbine is manufactured in Czechoslovakia and the generator’s
made in Vestros, Sweden.”


Higher pressure steam spins the turbine to produce electricity. The
waste steam from the same boiler goes to the pulp dryer, the paper
machines, and other parts of the process.


Back in his office, Rick Morgan says energy is the fourth largest
expense for paper mills:


“If you can’t control energy costs in this business, you can’t be in
business.”


The main product here is paper, but sometimes Sappi sells electricity
too. That happened during a recent cold snap:


“The electric demand increases and the costs go higher and higher, to
the point that it’s financially feasible for us to generate power for
Minnesota Power.”


Opportunities to produce electricity turn up in some surprising places.
Like along natural gas pipelines. The pressure has to be boosted
periodically as the gas travels through the pipe. Compressors fueled
by the natural gas do that work, and normally they vent off waste heat.


But now in South Dakota, the waste heat is fueling small power plants.
They look like the barns and silos of a farm. The generator itself is
about the size of a truck.


Basin Electric Power Coop spokesman Daryl Hill says the plants are
owned and operated by an Israeli company, and the co-op buys the power:


“We get basically 22 megawatts of baseload for little investment.”


Other countries are leading in these approaches because their fuel
prices have been so high. As prices go up in the U.S., power producers
are finding ways to use more efficient technologies, and they’re
returning to old-fashioned ideas like combined heat and power. This is
a form of co-generation that was once common across the country.


A central electric plant uses its waste steam to heat buildings. Of
course, most people don’t want to live next to a coal-fired power
plant. But Neal Elliott, with the American Council for an Energy-
Efficient Economy, says with combined heat and power, cleaner fuels,
like natural gas, can become competitive:


“Use natural gas, but use it much more efficiently. And instead of
throwing more than half of the fuel value away, let’s do it with co-
gen.”


Elliott says combined heat and power and other forms of co-generation
could provide 20% of America’s electricity needs, and save on heating
fuel at the same time. And he says recovered energy generation like
along the natural gas pipelines could provide another 20%.


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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New Power Plant Makes Light Out of Leftovers

With ongoing concerns about over-reliance on fossil fuels, researchers and entrepreneurs are looking for alternate ways to generate energy. One university scientist has created a power plant fueled by organic waste, including table scraps from restaurants. Tamara Keith reports:

Transcript

With ongoing concerns about over-reliance on fossil fuels, researchers and entrepreneurs are looking for alternate ways to generate energy. One university scientist has created a power plant fueled by organic waste, including table scraps from restaurants. Tamara Keith reports:


At Boulevard, an upscale restaurant, diners lunch on seared sea scallops, paella and grilled escolar among other options.


Back in the kitchen cooks are careful to keep all food scraps out of the trash.


(Kitchen sounds, scraping sounds)


The food scraps from this restaurant and 2,000 others in the San Francisco Bay Area are already being collected to turn into compost.


But now some of that food, about 8 tons a week, is going to a new biogas power plant at the University of California Davis. Tim Quaintance is a chef at Boulevard. He says he’s pleased that his leftovers aren’t just going to a landfill.


“It’s nice that in the past things that have basically been thrown away are now actually being used, and with this technology really contributing to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.”


(Generator runs in background)


In Davis, the table scraps are being converted into fuel at an experimental power plant known as the Biogas Energy Project. With its four large steel tanks and 22 kilowatt generator, this plant is the first real-world demonstration of a technique called anaerobic phased solids digestion.


Rayhong Jha is a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of California Davis. She first developed this technology on a smaller scale in her lab.


“What you see here is 20,000 times larger than the reactor system I use for laboratory testing.”


It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, leftovers into power, but Dave Konwinski says it’s real. He’s CEO of Onsite Power Systems Incorporated which licensed the technology and operates the plant.


“Every ton of collected food waste will provide enough either electrical or thermal energy to run an average of 10 California homes.”


Konwinski sees this test plant as the first step to commercializing biogas power plants. Here’s how it works: the food waste as well as grass clippings and other would-be-trash go into a sealed tank where bacteria break the mush down into water and organic acids… kind of like what happens if you leave lettuce in the fridge too long. When that’s done, the organic acids are pumped into another tank where different bacteria convert the soup into methane gas.


“Biogas can be used to run a generator, we have a generator we’ll be running here, or we can use it in the boiler to offset natural gas heat, and we’re looking at taking the gas and converting it into vehicle fuels.”


The trash and recycling company that serves San Francisco, NorCal Waste Systems, is providing the raw materials. Robert Reed is company’s director of corporate communications.


“This research and other research like this is very important because it could be a double or a triple. What I mean by that is it could produce new energy. It could reduce the amount of material going to landfills. And it could help reduce the creation of greenhouse gasses.”


And Reed says if this technology proves to be commercially viable, the results could be huge. In just California alone, 38 million tons of garbage is sent to landfills each year. He says half of that could be converted to power, and that’s enough energy to continuously power the entire city of San Francisco.


Suddenly leaving a little broccoli on your plate doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Trees Under the Influence of Ozone and Co2

  • The circle of trees, as seen from the outside. The white pipe seen near the top delivers either normal air, one, or both of the experimental gasses to the trees. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher has more:

Transcript

In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will
change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the
Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide
for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the
climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher reports:


We’re standing inside a circle of trees: paper birch, aspen, and sugar maples, maybe 15
feet high. And they’re surrounded by a ring of large white pipes spraying the trees with
gasses – that’s the high pitched noise.


Among 12 different circles of trees, some get carbon dioxide, or ozone, or a
combination. These are the very gasses believed responsible for changing the climate –
they hold in the earth’s warmth, forcing surface temperatures higher.


Dave Karnosky, with Michigan Technological University, heads the Aspen FACE project,
near Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Karnosky’s trying to predict how these gasses will affect
the northern forest:


“Those species, with aspen and aspen mixed with birch and maple make up a huge
portion of our northern forests, and there was a lot of interest by industry as well as to
what’s going to happen in the future as these greenhouse gasses continue to build up in
the atmosphere.”


Even ten years ago, when this project started, it was clear that carbon dioxide and ozone
levels were on the increase.


Ozone is destructive. It’s bad for people and for plants. Carbon dioxide, on the other
hand, is what we exhale, and what green plants need to grow. Both gasses have been on
the increase, largely due to burning fossil fuels such as in coal-fired power plants and in
cars and trucks. Karnosky says he knew aspen were quite responsive to both CO2 and
ozone:


“We weren’t sure much about the interaction, but we were sure interested in what would
happen with that, because those two pollutants are both increasing at about the same rate
in the atmosphere.”


The Aspen FACE project has shown that most trees grow well when exposed to carbon
dioxide, and most do poorly in ozone. With the gasses combined, bad effects tend to
offset the good ones, but results vary greatly between the different kinds of trees, and
even within a single species of trees, like aspen.


Karnosky has found there’s a tremendous range of genetic variation even among the
relatively few trees they’ve tested. That variation makes clear predictions difficult:


“It’s very tough to make a single prediction for species or individuals within species,
there’s so much genetic variation. So that’s been one of the, I think, kind of the highlights
from what I see in terms of a bit of a surprise for us.”


That genetic variation could be the forest’s salvation. Karnosky thinks that if some
aspens, for example, die off from ozone, maybe others will do okay, and fill the forest
back in. Sugar maples, which seem more tolerant of ozone, could replace some aspen
and birch. Then, the mix of trees in the forest would change, but the forest would
survive.


But, there could be problems if the air changes the forest too quickly. Neil Nelson is a
plant physiologist with the US Forest Service. Nelson says the region’s paper and pulp
industries rely heavily on aspen trees. He’s uncertain how quickly the forest, and forest
industry, can respond if aspen begins to die off – and how long it might take for other
trees to grow in.


“One of my colleagues has said, you know, the key issue may be whether things change
too fast for our society and economy to adjust to, and I think that’s an open question.
There seems to be great plasticity, and we aren’t quite there in terms of predicting from a
forest management standpoint what these results mean.”


It takes time to grow trees, maybe too much time if the climate suddenly shifts. The
Aspen FACE project has already provided regulators preliminary data on ozone. It could
become the basis for future pollution law. But, even ten years into the Aspen Face
project, there’s still a lot more data to harvest among the aspen and hardwoods.


For The GLRC, I’m Bob Kelleher.

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State Passes Greenhouse Gas Regs

The state of California is poised to lead the nation in the effort to combat global warming. California will impose the kind of sweeping greenhouse gas emissions reductions the federal government has rejected. The GLRC’s Tamara Keith has more:

Transcript

The state of California is poised to lead the nation in the effort to combat global
warming. California will impose the kind of sweeping greenhouse gas emissions
reductions the federal government has rejected. The GLRC’s Tamara Keith has more:


The California global warming solutions act will set into state law a cap on greenhouse
gas emissions: a 25% reduction by 2020, and it empowers state regulators to require
major emissions reductions from the largest carbon polluters. The list includes oil
refineries, power plants, landfills and cement factories. The bill’s author Democrat
Fabian Nuqez says he hope this landmark legislation starts a nationwide movement.


“We want to be the first to do our share, to say to the rest of the nation, let’s all follow
suit.”


This legislation is the result of a deal struck between Democrats and Republican Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Major business groups fought hard against the bill saying California can’t cure global
warming on its own and new regulations will drive businesses out of the state.


For the GLRC, I’m Tamara Keith.

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CAPTURING CARBON DIOXIDE FROM COAL PLANTS (Short Version)

With concerns about global warming, the government wants to build a power plant that would capture emissions – if it can find the right site. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

With concerns about global warming, the Government wants to build a
power plant that would capture emissions – if it can find the right site.
The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


The U.S Department of Energy is chipping in 750-million dollars to the
build what’s called the FutureGen coal-burning power plant, and a
consortium of power companies is contributing an additional 250-
million. That’s a billion dollars of investment.


Craig Stevens is a spokesman with the Department of Energy. He says
there are 250 years worth of coal reserves and this project would burn
that coal without polluting the air…


“If we can find a way to use coal that has zero emissions into the
atmosphere through geologic storage – actually pumping the carbon
dioxide into geologic formations – we can go a long way toward using
this coal but also saving our environment.


Stevens says the DOE is looking for a site that is safe to store carbon
dioxide deep underground.


The agency is currently reviewing proposals and plans to choose a spot
by late next year.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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