In a step towards building sustainable urban infrastructure, Toronto is set to become a North American leader in the development of Green Roofs. Green Roofs help to insulate buildings from the elements, provide a natural animal habitat in the middle of urban development and help reduce a city’s environmental footprint. The City of Toronto has approved “Making Green Roofs Happen,” an initiative to put pockets of nature on top of existing public buildings. Just in case lower heating bills and cleaner air aren’t enough of an incentive, the plan also recommends financial incentives for private Green Roofs.
Environment
Bush America to Use Less Oil
Richard wrote:
“President Bush announced something called the Advanced Energy Initiative to ween America off of its dependence on foreign oil in his state of the union address… it’s for maybe the wrong reasons, but it’s at least a small step in the right direction, from an environmental standpoint.”
Details can be found on the NASDAQ website.
Thanks, Richard!
Top 25 Green Energy Purchasers in the USA
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has a neat list on their best partners for promoting green energy. Together the top 25 partners consumed 3.3 million megawatt-hours of green energy.
The top 25 Partners are Partners whose annual green power purchase is the largest, and whose green power purchase has been completed. Their actions are helping drive the development of new renewable energy sources for electricity generation.
Number one on the list will surprise you.
Training Small Miners
The Suriname branch of the World Wildlife Fund is working thanks to a $150,000 grant awarded by the Inter American Development Bank to train small scale miners in environmentally friendly mining techniques. Miners currently seperate gold using chemicals such as mercuary, that are dumped into rivers once used. WWF is teaching miners about environmentally friendly techniques to seperate gold such as mechanical means. The program was designed to educate the affects of the miner’s behavior on the local ecosystem while providing alternative means in a hope to change social norms.
Algae Isn’t All Smoke and Mirrors
I’m sure everyone is aware of the amazing properties of algae. Prepare to gain newfound respect for our small flora, they could be the next biodiesel crops. Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, lets say ……. courtesy of a power plant’s exhaust stack, the algae cleans the exhaust and grows at phenominal rates. After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out i.e. biodiesel for automobiles. Additionally the exhaust contains 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus, 86 percent less nitrous oxides. What a little workhorse.
Creater, Berzin of MIT calculates the biodiesel crop potential at 15,000 gallons per acre. To put that in perspective soybeans (currently the major source of biodiesel fuels) produce just 60 gallons per acre. Berzin isnt alone in the algae-to-oil race. Competiator (yes people compete over this stuff) Greenshift Corporation, a Mount Arlington, N.J., technology incubator company, licensed CO2-gobbling algae technology that uses a screen-like algal filter. It was developed by David Bayless, a researcher at Ohio University. One can only hope more competing algae will result in good things.