On Tuesday, October 17th the number of people living in the US will cross the 300 million mark. Mark Brush has more:
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On Tuesday, October 17th the number of people living in the US will cross the 300 million mark. Mark Brush has more:
The US Census Bureau says after birth rates, death rates, and immigration rates are calculated, one person is added to the population every 11 seconds. So, by the time this report is over, 5 more people will have been added. What’s driving population growth in the US? Experts say natural increases account for 60% of the growth – that’s when birth rates outpace death rates – and immigration accounts for the rest of it, about 40%.
The Population Reference Bureau looked at population trends from 1970 to 2000. According to the Bureau, more of us are living alone. The researchers say one-person households account for more than a quarter of the population. That means on average there’s more housing and more energy being used for each person in the US. The US is expected to hit the 400 million mark in about 37 years.
A concept car powered by a lithium-ion battery. (Photo courtesy of hybridcars.com)
A lithium-ion battery used to power an automobile. (Photo courtesy of hybridcars.com)
Hybrid cars have become almost a symbol of environmentalism on the road. Powered by a gas-electric hybrid motor, these cars get up to 60 miles per gallon or better. Those gas savings come largely thanks to a battery. Now, people in the auto industry are looking at the next generation of battery that could push the gas savings even higher. Dustin Dwyer has this look at how batteries are cutting down on the need for oil:
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Hybrid cars have become almost a symbol of environmentalism on the road. Powered by a gas-electric hybrid motor, these cars get up to 60 miles per gallon of gas or better. Those gas savings come largely thanks to a battery. Now, people in the auto industry are looking at the next generation of battery that could push the gas savings even higher. Dustin Dwyer has this look at how batteries are cutting down the need for oil:
For about a hundred years now, the auto industry in the United States has been associated with a certain kind of vehicle – a vehicle that’s big, powerful and chugs a lot of gas. It’s all been based on the internal combustion engine.
Now, that model is being challenged. It involves a number of technologies, but the first to really break through has been the hybrid. Hybrid cars and trucks still have an internal combustion engine under the hood, but the engine is paired with a battery. Of course, it’s not just a battery like the batteries that have always been in cars. The batteries in hybrids are called nickel metal hydride batteries (NiMH).
One company that makes them is Cobasys. On a factory floor a little less than an hour north of Detroit, Cobasys engineer Scott Lindholm explains what makes these batteries different.
“Basically the big advantage of nickel metal hydride in a hybrid vehicle environment is it can do millions of charge and discharge cycles. Where, if you buy a battery for your flashlight or your radio, you really just charge it once as your primary battery. This will accept charge and give you power multiple times.”
That ability to be recharged, and emit energy from a battery that weighs less than in previous generations has made all current hybrid vehicles possible. For hybrid owners, that’s meant better gas mileage, and lower emissions.
The battery itself isn’t exactly new; the technology was first introduced in the early 1980s. It’s taken almost until now for car companies to realize the full potential of nickel metal hydrides, but this isn’t the final step. Bradley Berman is editor of hybridcars.com. He says the next wave of batteries is coming from the world of iPods and laptops.
“It’s already out there in small electronic devices, and the big question is can it scale up for an automotive application? And the race is on to make that happen.”
Many say these lithium-ion batteries have the potential to be cheaper, lighter and more powerful than today’s nickel metal hydride batteries. The problem with them right now is safety. You might remember hearing something recently about batteries in laptop computers exploding. Well, those were lithium-ion batteries, and bigger, more powerful batteries in cars could mean a higher chance of catching fire for lithium-ion batteries.
Berman is confident that problem can be overcome, and he says we could see these kind of batteries in cars within 4-8 years. And that could mean big changes in gas mileage for hybrid owners. Berman says while the current generation Prius gets 60 miles per gallon in the city, lithium-ion batteries could get the next generation up to 80 miles per gallon. And the next step, a new plug-in car.
“If one of these carmakers comes through with some limited capacity for plugging in, which means you could charge more of it up, and you could use more of the battery on a regular basis, you’re starting to approach maybe triple digits.”
Some argue that plugging in just moves the environmental harm elsewhere. Instead of using gas to power your car, you’d generally be using coal or nuclear power from your local energy company. But supporters say that still leads to lower overall emissions.
Also, hybrid technology for cars doesn’t come in a vacuum. It can be combined with new biofuels, or eventually hydrogen. That could mean significantly cleaner cars – even cars with zero emissions. But just like the development of the nickel-metal hydride battery, these technologies could take a number of years before they’re ready.
Switchgrass is an easily grown biofuel crop, which can be used to make ethanol. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
This summer, drivers got a crash course in the dangers of fossil fuel. Gas prices shot above three dollars a gallon, concerns about global warming surged, and instability continued to plague areas of the world where oil is produced. We’ll be taking a look at some of the technologies that could help the US kick its fossil fuel habit. We’re starting with an alternative fuel that’s been sprouting up in gas stations across the region. Dustin Dwyer has this look at the promise, and the limitations of ethanol:
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This summer, drivers got a crash course in the dangers of fossil fuel. Gas prices shot above $3 a gallon, concerns about global warming surged, and instability continued to plague areas of the world where oil is produced. We’ll be taking a look at some of the technologies that could help the US kick its fossil fuel habit. We’re starting with an alternative fuel that’s been sprouting up in gas stations across the region. Dustin Dwyer has this look at the promise, and the limitations of ethanol:
This summer, Misty Childs found a way to do something positive about the fossil fuel problem. She says that she and her husband realized their Chevy Silverado pickup could run on E-85, a blend of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.
E85 burns cleaner than gas alone, so it’s good for the environment. And the ethanol is made from corn grown in the US. As she tops off her tank at a gas station, Childs says that makes a difference.
“It means a lot that we’re doing something for our country here, and not having to rely on others.”
Detroit’s Big Three automakers have been making a big push for E-85 in the last year. E-85-capable vehicles get the automakers a credit on federal fuel economy standards. So, even if drivers put regular gas in the vehicles instead of E-85, Detroit still gets a credit for doing better. And this summer, as more buyers became aware of the problem with fossil fuels, E-85 was just about the only alternative Detroit had to offer.
But ethanol as it’s currently made has limits. Jason Hill is a researcher at the University of Minnesota. He recently published a study on the long term outlook for corn-based ethanol.
“What we found is if you convert every corn kernel we produce in this nation to ethanol, we would be able to offset only about 12 percent of our national gasoline usage. So that’s not that large.”
That’s every corn kernel, including what we currently use for food. Which brings up another problem with ethanol: if E85 jumps in popularity, will that mean less corn for animal feed and grocery stores?
Maybe. Corn originally became popular because it was already being grown around much of the country, with help from federal subsidies. And ethanol processors, such as Archer Daniels Midland, also got tax breaks for making corn-based fuel.
But there’s another option for ethanol. Inside a lab at Michigan State University, researchers are working on the next generation of the fuel. This is what’s called cellulosic ethanol. Instead of using grains like corn kernels, cellulosic ethanol is made from the starches in plant cell walls. It can be made from pretty much anything that stands up straight – wood, prairie grasses and corn stalks.
That offers the possibility to increase the ethanol output for every acre of land devoted to the crops, and those crops don’t require fossil fuel-based fertilizer. They also don’t require planting every year by gas or diesel burning tractors the way corn does.
Professor Bruce Dale heads research into cellulosic ethanol at MSU. He says the current problem with cellulosic ethanol is finding a cheap way to break down the stiff materials. His lab uses ammonia to do the trick.
“The idea is to make cheap sugar. And the plant cell walls potentially could give you the cheapest sugar on the planet, if we could figure out how to get at that sugar easily. That’s what our ammonia process does in combination with the enzymes.”
It turns out that, much like a teenager eating pop-rocks, cars and trucks get a whole lot of energy from fuels based on sugar. Dale says most woody plants have plenty of sugar, but it’s really hard to get that sugar out.
Dale says some cellulosic ethanol could be on the market in the next few years, and the fuel could eventually sell for about 60 cents a gallon.
Right now, ethanol is still hard to find at the pumps. And one study says, even with major investment over the next decade, cellulosic ethanol might only equal half of our current oil useage by 2050.
That’s still a lot. But to really eliminate the need for gas, many experts say it’ll take more than just one technology.
Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:
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Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:
Phosphorus is a major source of water pollution in many parts of the country. It can create algae blooms. When these blooms die off they rob the water of oxygen, often killing underwater plants and animals.
Scotts Miracle Gro is one of the companies cutting back on phosphorus. Rich Martinez is the chief environmental officer for Scotts. He says the problem occurs when the product doesn’t go where it’s intended:
“We did it as our part of contribution to a reduction in phosphorus losses – material moving off target that might end up in the water.”
Officials from Lebanon Seaboard say they’ll also reduce the amount of phosphorus in their fertilizers. Martinez says gardeners will probably see the new, lower phosphorus products on shelves by next spring.
Coal-burning power plants are under pressure to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. One type of carbon removal technology is about to get a multi-million dollar test. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
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Coal burning power plants are under pressure to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. One type of carbon removal technology is about to get a multi-million dollar test. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
Government regulators are looking into potential controls or taxes on carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. The electric utility industry says it’s trying various ways to reduce CO2 emissions on its own.
A $10 million project at a power plant in Wisconsin will use chilled ammonia on the gas coming from the plant’s boiler. Barry McNulty is a spokesperson for WE Energies. He says the hope is to make the CO2 more dense:
“What we’re trying to do is use ammonia, much like you do in the scrubbers and whatnot of some of the other air emission equipment and separate that carbon.”
If the experiment works, utilities may be able to capture the C02 and sell it or store it deep underground. The Electric Power Research Institute and a French company that developed the chilled ammonia technology are part of the project.
The emerald ash borer is killing millions of ash trees, and the destructive beetle continues to show up in more and more places. Rebecca Williams reports one state is cutting down trees even though the beetle hasn’t been found there yet:
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The emerald ash borer is killing millions of ash trees, and the destructive beetle continues to show up in more and more places. Rebecca Williams reports one state is cutting down trees even though the beetle hasn’t been found there yet:
The emerald ash borer has killed more than 20 million trees in several Midwestern states and Ontario. The beetle kills trees by eating through the living tissue underneath the bark.
But it takes a tree a few years to show signs of infestation. So foresters sometimes have to cut down trees and strip the bark away to look for the beetles.
Wisconsin officials say they’ll be cutting down about 6-thousand trees to look for the ash borer.
Jane Larson is a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.
“Well for many years we used to think, well if it gets here, but I think we’ve realized it’s not a matter of if but when it’s going to arrive.”
Larson says officials hope to get a jump start on containing the ash borer if they find it. The borer has cost homeowners, states and industries tens of millions of dollars.
Some scientists are sounding a warning bell about the rush to plant new biofuel crops. Charlie Schlenker reports they worry the new crops could damage the environment:
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Some scientists are sounding a warning bell about the rush to plant new biofuel crops. Charlie Schlenker reports they worry the new crops could damage the environment:
The scientists warn many potential Biofuel crops have similarities with plants that have become invasive and damaging to crops and the environment. Ecology Professor Roger Anderson is the co-author of a recent article in the journal Science. He notes plants targeted for biofuel crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass grow fast:
“They have very high rates of photosynthesis, so they’re gonna yield a lot of biomass. A second feature is that many of these plants also have few enemies and pests and diseases.”
Anderson says no studies have determined whether these plants are likely to get out of hand as kudzu, johnsongrass, and giant reed have. Anderson says invasive alien plants cost U-S agriculture more than $123 billion a year. He worries political pressure to plant new biofuel crops may cause damaging shortcuts.
For the Environment Report, I’m Charlie Schlenker.
US environmental groups and regulators are concerned about lead in products imported from China. Lead is commonly used in Chinese manufacturing because it’s cheap and flexible. Rebecca Williams reports:
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US environmental groups and regulators are concerned about lead in products imported from China.
Lead is commonly used in Chinese manufacturing because it’s cheap and flexible. Rebecca
Williams reports:
Earlier this year, a Minneapolis boy died from lead poisoning after swallowing a toy charm sold with a
pair of Reebok shoes. The charm was found to be 99% lead.
Scott Wolfson is a spokesperson for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. He says the
commission’s especially concerned about imported toy jewelry made with lead.
“We are an agency responsible for recalling over 160 million pieces of children’s jewelry over the past
three years. Much of it has actually come from China.”
Wolfson says the commission is pressuring Chinese government officials and manufacturers to
switch to alternate metals.
The Sierra Club is suing the US government to stop the sale of toy jewelry made with lead.
Water is a vital resource no matter where you go. Commentator Cameron Davis recently had a first hand look at the threats to water supplies in other parts of the world. He returned from his trip with a renewed sense of the importance of protecting water supplies at home:
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Water is a vital resource no matter where you go. Commentator Cameron Davis recently had a first hand look at the threats to water supplies in other parts of the world. He returned from his trip with a renewed sense of the importance of protecting water supplies at home:
Not so long ago, my wife and I bought a couple of cheap one-direction tickets and ventured around the world to 11 countries in 11 weeks.
I couldn’t help but be reminded that we’re blessed when it comes to water where we live. My home is near the Great Lakes – with nearly 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh surface water.
Other areas of the world aren’t so fortunate. India struggles with water issues every day. The sacred Ganges River, which flows downward through the majestic upper Himalayas, is used for everything from ferrying the souls of the dead into their next life to the holy Hindu Aarti ritual in which millions of people wade annually for prayer. At the same time the Ganges is revered, it’s also used for sewage and waste disposal, to the point that if the Ganges flowed through the United States, it would violate water quality standards many times over.
In Vietnam, we learned that groundwater levels were dropping precipitously in the Bac Lieu Province. Few laws existed to protect aquifers from businesses that drilled to provide water to the aquaculture industry, namely for farm-raised shrimp. The practices were expected to have impacts on the fragile ecology of the Mekong Delta.
All of this was going on at the very same time that King Abdullah II of Jordan was convening the International Water Demand Management Conference in the Middle East and beyond.
While we’re hardly immune from water pressures and mismanagement here at home, we have some important opportunities to give something back to future generations. The Great Lakes states are contemplating policy changes that might be a model for the rest of the nation. In the coming years, the legislatures of the eight Great Lakes states must consider protections under a Great Lakes water use “Compact” that the governors of the eight states signed last December.
The only question is whether we’ll ensure these new protections are strong enough, or whether they’ll slip to the lowest common denominator of protections. After seeing how water is honored yet misused in many other parts of the world, I’m hopeful we’ll do the right thing. And in so doing, give other states and regions in the U.S. some ideas for better water conservation. After all, water is one of those rare things that bring us – all of us, from all walks of life – together to form a common regional identity. Our waters are more than a resource for us to use and protect. They’re the source of life.
Cameron Davis is the president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
Tom Micheletti (right), and Excelsior Energy Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Bob Evans (left). They are locating where the proposed power plant will be built near the town of Taconite, Minnesota. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Tom Micheletti, Co-President of Excelsior Energy, the company formed to build the Mesaba Energy project: a 600 megawatt Integrated Combined Cycle Coal Gasification plant. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the heat-trapping gas carbon-dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:
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Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:
Coal has a well deserved bad reputation. Typical coal burning power plants release mercury, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and lots of carbon dioxide. Those releases mean toxins in the air, soot, acid rain, and many believe global warming. But Tom Micheletti says there’s a way to use coal with very little pollution.
Using heat, steam, pressure, and oxygen, coal can be broken down to a relatively clean gas, and a handful of other chemical products. The gas is burned, to turn generators and produce electricity. The technology is called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. Micheletti says, the technology isn’t new, but applying it this way is.
“All we’re doing is marrying the gasification technology, with a technology that’s been well established, the combined cycle gas technology – power plant technology. And all we’re doing is simply putting those two technologies together.”
Micheletti is Co-President of Excelsior Energy, a company formed to build the nation’s first large scale coal gasification electric power plant in northeast Minnesota. At 600 megawatts, it would dwarf demonstration plants now online in Indiana and Florida.
Some experts say coal gasification is not only promising, it’s more practical than nuclear power, natural gas, solar or wind. Daniel Schrag is a climatologist and head of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
“We have a lot of coal in the US. We’re very fortunate that way. The problem is that coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit energy than any other fossil fuel. And so, when we burn coal and make electricity, it’s really bad for the climate system.”
Schrag says there’s more carbon dioxide around us now than humans have ever experienced. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Most scientists believe it blankets the earth, forcing temperatures higher.
Schrag says, when used to generate electricity, coal gasification has big advantages over conventional power plants, because it can capture CO2.
“You get more energy for the amount of coal you put in, and that’s good for carbon emissions. The other thing is that it seems to be cheaper in an IGCC plant, or a gasification plant, to capture the carbon dioxide after one extracts the energy from the coal, and then makes it much easier to capture it and inject it into a geological reservoir.”
The key, Schrag says, is a process called sequestration. You capture, and then sequester it, or lock that carbon dioxide away, where it won’t escape into the atmosphere. It’s already being done.
This is the Dakota Gasification Company, just outside Beulah, North Dakota. Here they turn coal into a burnable gas and almost a dozen other products. They also produce plenty of carbon dioxide, but the CO2 is not vented into the air; it’s trapped and compressed. That’s the noise.
The CO2 is piped more than 200 miles into Canada where it’s pumped into oil wells, forcing the last oil out and leaving the CO2 underground. Near oceans it can be pumped under deep ocean sediments, where it stays put.
And that’s all very good, but others say even good power plants might be a bad idea.
Ross Hammond is with the Minnesota based organization Fresh Energy. Hammond says gasification’s proponents are overlooking conservation and the opportunities for clean energy.
“When we’ve exhausted all the clean options including biomass and photovoltaics, and wind and the other options, then we need to look at coal.”
But Harvard’s Daniel Schrag says it’s not as simple as pushing money toward pollution free energy.
“And the answer is complicated. The answer is perhaps not. It may be that coal is so cheap that even the extra cost of capturing the carbon and storing it underground may still make it cheaper than the alternatives, than wind and solar.”
Schrag says we’ll need it all – nuclear, hydro, wind and biomass. But to satisfy the nation’s hunger for energy, he says we’ll need coal – best used in coal gasification.
