Our knowledge of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and experience dealing with it have greatly increased over the past decade, but CCS is still far from living up to its potential in stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and mitigating climate change impacts. To deploy CCS on a larger scale, the following economic, social, and legal barriers
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In April 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its 17th annual U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory, The Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2010. The report shows overall GHG emissions in 2010 increased by 213 million metric tons or 3.2 percent from the previous year, despite the sluggish economy. According
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It’s rare in these politically turbulent times for a government entity to make a unanimous decision, but that’s what happened as California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) adopted the most stringent cap-and-trade mandate in the United States in October 2011. This cap-and-trade program is one of the measures being carried out under California’s Global Warming Solutions
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Stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels has become widely accepted as necessary in order to limit the long-term warming of global temperatures by 2 to 3°C and thus avoid devastating environmental consequences. Because the use of fossil fuels is expected to continue to increase in the future, new, innovative strategies need to be placed
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In its efforts to tackle the problem of climate change, the Australian government will introduce a carbon tax starting July 1, 2012. Australia’s goal is to reduce the country’s total emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; to achieve this goal, the country is starting with a carbon tax,
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In January 2012, for the first time, the EPA released greenhouse gas (GHG) data collected under the GHG Reporting Program. The data set shows 2010 U.S. GHG emissions from large industrial facilities and from suppliers of certain fossil fuels and industrial gases. The data confirm that among large, direct GHG emitters, the sector with the largest emissions is power plants, followed by petroleum refineries. The data can be dowloaded from the USEPA’s web site using the following links . . .
The first-ever Carbon Management Technology Conference will be held 7–9 February 2012 in Orlando, Florida, USA. Eight engineering societies are sponsoring this conference, bringing together all disciplines to share the latest technologies, strategies and systems related to the management and containment of carbon production. The three-day technical program will feature more than 200 presentations on
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In a last-minute deal reached on December 11, 2011 at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Durban, South Africa, governments decided to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not later than
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A major new mapping study analyzing climate change vulnerability down to 25 square kilometers worldwide reveals that some of the world’s fastest growing populations are increasingly at risk from the impacts of climate-related natural hazards and sea level rise. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) released by risk analysis and mapping firm Maplecroft analyzes the
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As the prospect of cap and trade legislation in the United States has slowly faded, energy efficiency standards for commercial buildings and industrial facilities have emerged as a viable and palatable alternative that could achieve significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. One example in this growing trend is President Obama’s Better Building Initiative, which was
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