writeaboutwarming

August 13, 2012 - Ceres is an organization made up of investors, companies, and public interest groups that work to accelerate and expand adoption of sustainable business practices.  They, along with collaborators M.J. Bradley & Assoc., the National Resources Defense Council, Entergy, Exelon, Tenaska, and Bank of America, issue a report every other year that assesses the environmental performance and progress of electric power companies.  This year's report is the eighth edition of Benchmarking Air Emissions, and it makes for enjoyable reading.  Lo and behold, the United States is in the midst of a clean energy transition.  At last!  Here are some of the long-awaited particulars: From 2008 to 2010, emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from electric power plants fell by over 30 percent. During the same period, carbon dioxide emissions fell four percent.  Preliminary data show another five percent reduction took place in 2011. When la...

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005 ) was signed into law by George W. Bush that year – the year that ended with global peak oil having been realized, as luck would have it. What a coincidence. One of its primary stipulations was that greater quantities of biofuels be added to gasoline, thereby (so it was hoped) reducing American dependence upon foreign countries for oil. This line of reasoning was based largely upon Brazil’s success in utilizing ethanol derived from sugar cane ( http://www.v-brazil.com/science/ethanol/bush-brazil.html ). The Act incorporates policy determined by politicians, not scientists. Fast forward six years. Let’s see how things are going: “The Russian drought [of 2010] simply sparked this latest speculative bubble. Russia did lose 33 percent of its wheat harvest, but it had plenty of wheat stocks on hand to make up the difference. Instead of using those stocks, the Russian government was persuaded by multi...