Energy

US Residents Fight for the Right to Hang Laundry

Carin Froehlich has help from her granddaughter Ava as they hang some laundry in the front yard of her residence in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, November 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Tim Shaffer)

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal.

Canada's Tar Sands Are the Future of Oil Production: Oil Exec.

The Syncrude extraction facility in the northern Alberta oil sand fields is reflected in the pool of water being recycled for re-use in the extraction process in Fort McMurray, Canada in 2007.  (AFP/File/David Boily)

MONTREAL - The era of oil gushing from ground wells is over and can only be replaced by costly and complex refining of deposits such as Canada's oil sands to satisfy rising global energy needs, said a senior oil executive.

Pressed about the high cost of oil sands extraction and attacks by environmentalists worried about its contribution to global warming, Jean-Michel Gires, president of French-based Total's Canadian subsidiary, told AFP he is optimistic specifically about the future of Canada's oil sands development.

It’s a Dirty Business — The New Gold Rush That Is Blackening Canada’s Name

Syncrude's Fort McMurray tar sands (Times/UK)

A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance. Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a ploughed field.

Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the world's most polluting sources of oil.

A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction

We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard.

Thinking Beyond Electric Cars

From listening to the headlines about the report from the Committee on Climate Change, you might think that a wholesale switch to electric cars over the next few decades would magic away our carbon emissions from transport.

Boxer-Kerry Climate Bill Greenwashes Nuclear Power

Bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear lobby, Senators Boxer and Kerry have included nuclear power into their bill to address climate change. In their proposed legislation, the Senators claim that "nuclear energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon, electricity...." Funny we've heard that before. In fact, the bill's nuclear section reads like it was lifted off the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) website, despite its lack of veracity.

Afghanistan and the New Great Game

Why is Afghanistan so important?

A glance at a map and a little knowledge of the region suggest that the real reasons for Western military involvement may be largely hidden.

Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first.)

Greenpeace Study Finds Oil Companies May Be Doomed

In this May 29, 2009 file photo, an oil rig is seen at sunset in the desert oil field of Sakhir, Bahrain. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, file)

A long-term decline in the demand for oil could undermine the huge investments in Canadian tar sands, which have been heavily opposed by environmentalists, according to a report published today.

The report, by Greenpeace, will make uncomfortable reading for the companies that are investing tens of billions of pounds to exploit the hard-to-extract oil in the belief that demand and the price would climb inexorably as countries such as China and India industrialise.

Posted in Energy, oil

Food Waste Helps Power Wastewater Plant

Wastewater plant workers fill a tank with food scraps to be converted into methane gas. (Lance Iversen / The Chronicle) Inside hulking white tanks near the Oakland foot of the Bay Bridge, some of your pizza crusts, kung pao chicken and orange peels are cleaning the wastewater from 650,000 households in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

Sort of.

Ducking the Shadows of Suburban Life

When the jets come, they start out like the shrill distant whine of a child, or with the deep rumbling sound of thunder in the mountains.

Each jet crescendos into an elephantine wail that fills the sky and all the spaces below it: kitchens, patios, bathrooms, bedrooms—there’s no escape. The wail turns to a sudden roar above the house, rattling the Victorian redwood timbers of mom’s home.

Finally, as the planes pass, their roar fades into a distant rumble….
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