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methane

Scale of Methane Plumes From Melting Arctic Shock Researchers

December 16, 2011 by Jonathan Smith
with 536 views
2

For those who read this blog, this following story from The Independent is nothing new. Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region. The scale and volume of... [read more]

Waste Management Uses Landfill Gas To Collect Trash

December 1, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci
with 382 views
0

Earth’s natural resources grow increasingly more limited every day, but humanity’s consumption guarantees an abundance of one unlikely “resource.” A typical American throws out about four pounds of trash per day, or more than 240 million tons every year. Most of that garbage winds up in landfills and releases methane as it decomposes. But what if that gas could be harnessed as a clean energy source for vehicles? energyNOW! correspondent Peter Standring visited a California landfill to see how one waste disposal company is turning trash from landfills into clean-burning fuel for trash trucks. [read more]

Methane: When Agendas Trump Facts

September 27, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 420 views
4

Actually, the lessons were learned from the media’s reporting — and the reactions to that reporting — of a recent paper on climate change. The paper I am talking about is a study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The title of the study is Coal to Gas: The Influence of Methane Leakage. [read more]

GE’s Mark Vachon: “Gas Is Massive”

July 13, 2011 by Marc Gunther
with 522 views
0

How’s GE’s ecomagination  going? I put that question today to Mark Vachon, who is vice president for ecomagination at GE. He replied by talking about natural gas. “The large macro trend of gas is massive,” he said. “Our oil and gas business will be a huge beneficiary.” An abundance of shale gas in the U.S., and methane gas reserves... [read more]

What New Ethylene Plants, or "Crackers", Tell Us

June 27, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 1,170 views
0

Sometimes a news item informs us about much more than the event in question. I think the recent announcements of new petrochemical projects in the US fall into that category. Both Shell and Dow Chemical are planning new ethylene crackers in the US, a market in which established ethylene facilities were being shut down only a few... [read more]

Earth at Boiling Point

June 15, 2011 by Sam Carana
with 1,323 views
11

As long as no tipping points are crossed, many believe, there will only be insignificant rises in temperature and sea level, while any dangers are far away in the future. However, the boiling point analogy may more appropriately describe the risk of Arctic methane releases, and the window of opportunity we have to act. [read more]

Dirty shale gas = lower gas prices = oilsands boom = double-barrelled emissions increase

April 14, 2011 by Tyler Hamilton
with 500 views
4

For a generation that’s supposed to start cleaning up its energy mix, I find it disturbing that the big money is flowing toward dirtier and dirtier sources instead. Take the case of shale gas, which is plentiful and now economical to develop in North America. Shale gas, at the point of combustion, is no cleaner or dirtier than... [read more]

On Farm Renewable Energy Production Shows Tremendous Growth

February 23, 2011 by Mike Gregory
with 692 views
1

The number of solar panels, wind turbines and methane digesters on America's farms and ranches has increased significantly over the past decade and there are now 8,569 operations producing their own renewable energy, according to the results of the 2009 On-Farm Renewable Energy Production Survey released today. Conducted by the U.S.... [read more]

Wrapping Up 2010: Good News for Solar Industry

December 22, 2010 by Taylen Peterson
with 748 views
0

First off, as I’m sure most of you are aware, Congress approved a one-year extension of 1603, the Treasury Grant Program, which pays cash grants for 30 percent of solar energy (and other renewable energy) installations in lieu of a tax credit, for companies that have not acquired a “tax appetite”; that is, enough of a tax burden.... [read more]

Worse than Coal?

December 8, 2010 by Geoffrey Styles
with 1,994 views
39

As I noted in last Wednesday's posting, one of the questions that came up in a webinar on shale gas in which I participated concerned the climate consequences of higher recent estimates of methane leakage from US natural gas systems. In reading further comments and blog postings on this subject, I was surprised to see assertions that... [read more]

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EPA confirms high Natural Gas leakage rates

December 7, 2010 by David Lewis
with 4,301 views
15

The latest EPA study confirms that its original "seminal" study of methane leaks from natural gas use, i.e. "Methane Emissions from the Natural Gas Industry (GRI/EPA 1996) was in error.  The GRI/EPA 1996 study was the holy grail.  The IPCC used GRI/EPA numbers when it assessed the climate impact of gas.  The old figures... [read more]

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Gas: the bridge to nowhere?

November 29, 2010 by David Lewis
with 2,133 views
10

I corresponded with Dr. Robert Howarth since I posted an article about his research into the climate impact of gas here last week.  Howarth is the scientist who is saying gas has a greater climate impact than coal.   Howarth emailed to say his opinion is based on several points.  One, the latest research indicates... [read more]

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Natural Gas. Green? Perhaps NOT.

November 20, 2010 by David Lewis
with 2,227 views
2

“Using the best available science, we conclude that natural gas is no better than coal and may in fact be worse than coal in terms of its greenhouse gas footprint when evaluated over the time course of the next several decades.”  This is the recently posted conclusion of Dr. Robert Howarth, David Atkinson Professor of Ecology and... [read more]

Closed-Loop Energy

November 17, 2010 by Geoffrey Styles
with 281 views
0

This morning I received an emailed press release announcing that the Altamont landfill gas facility in California had been recognized by the state's governor for its achievement in sustainability. What makes this facility unique is that the methane gas generated by the landfill waste is collected and turned into liquefied natural gas (... [read more]

Methane update

November 11, 2010 by Lou Grinzo
with 730 views
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I haven’t checked in with our second favorite greenhouse gas, methane in a while, so I hopped over to the NOAA ESRL GMD Carbon Cycle - Interactive Atmospheric Data Visualization page, did the usual bunch of clicking, and here’s what I saw:      Notice anything, how shall I put this, outstanding about the graph? Perhaps... [read more]