Scientific American Topic - Green Technology

Street Smarts: The BioBus Brings a Rolling Science Lab to Resource-Strapped Schools

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

It's halfway through first period, and 10th-grade students at Frances Perkins Academy in Brooklyn are in science class--not in school, but on a specially outfitted bus parked outside. [More]

Utility to Build First Power Plant with Greenhouse Gas Emissions Limits in California

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:15:00 EST

Calpine Corp. is poised to build the first U.S. power plant with federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions in California after clearing a final regulatory hurdle today.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District granted the Houston-based utility its final air quality permit today, allowing the company to proceed with the planned construction of a 600-megawatt natural gas-fired Russell City Energy Center. The 15-acre project site is in Hayward, just east of the San Francisco Bay.

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Readers Respond on "Squeezing More Oil from the Ground"

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

End or No End? In “ Squeezing More Oil from the Ground ,” Leonardo Maugeri, director of strategies and development of an international oil company, expresses the conventional view of his profession, assuming a world of near-infinite oil resources to be produced under market forces. Maugeri is particularly dismissive of our Scientific American article “The End of Cheap Oil” [March 1998]. It is difficult to find fault with at least its title, considering that the average price of oil over the preceding 10 years was $28 a barrel but rose to $45 over the ensuing decade to reach a peak of almost $150 in 2008.

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Will U.S. Government Crackdown on "Greenwashing"?

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:20:00 EST

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to crack down on " greenwashing " when it updates its environmental marketing guidelines for the first time since 1998.

The agency's Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims , or Green Guides, define terms such as "recyclable" and "biodegradable" and explain how businesses should back up environmental assertions. Though FTC cannot force businesses to adopt greener practices, Section 5 of the FTC Act authorizes the agency to intervene when businesses are misrepresenting their practices to clients -- in other words, turning greenwashing into fraud.

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Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

The breakdown of the Washington policy process has four manifestations. First is a chronic inability to focus beyond the next election. “Shovel-ready” projects squeeze out attention to vital longer-term strategies that may require a decade or more. Second, most key decisions are made in congressional backrooms through negotiations with lobbyists, who simultaneously fund the congressional campaigns. Third, technical expertise is largely ignored or bypassed, while expert communities such as climate scientists are falsely and recklessly derided by the Wall Street Journal as a conspiratorial interest group chasing federal grants. Fourth, there is little way for the public to track and comment on complex policy proposals working their way through Congress or federal agencies.

These failings take a special toll on the challenges of sustainable development because there is no quick fix, for example, for the challenge of large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of getting long-term strategies for adopting low-carbon energy sources, upgrading the power grid, encouraging electric transportation and so on, we are getting cash for clunkers, subsidies for corn-based ethanol, and other ineffective and highly costly nonsolutions delivered by large-scale lobbying.

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Shining a Light on Plants' Quantum Secret to Boost Photosynthesis

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:31:00 EST

In less than one billionth of a second, plants from algae to redwoods transform 95 percent of the sunlight that falls on them--10 17 joules per second bathe the planet--into energy stored chemically as carbohydrates. The quantum key to doing that lies in a phenomenon known to physicists as quantum coherence, according to new research published in Nature on February 4. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) [More]

Obama Budget Increases Funding for Energy Research and Nuclear Power

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST

Nuclear energy and energy research are among the big winners in the proposed $28.4 billion Energy Department fiscal 2011 budget the White House unveiled today.

The almost 5 percent increase in funding from fiscal 2010 covers a $36 billion boost in loan guarantee authority for nuclear power facilities for a total of $54 billion, $300 million for an innovative energy research program, and a $226 million increase in funding for the Office of Science for research and development of "breakthrough" technologies for a total of $5.1 billion.

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Over the Top: Data Show "Green" Roofs Could Cool Urban Heat Islands and Boost Water Conservation

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:45:00 EST

NEW YORK--Through the rain-pocked window of his Prius heading east on the Queensboro Bridge, Stuart Gaffin sees a black, watery sea of missed opportunities. [More]

Genetically Modified Forest Planned for U.S. Southeast

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:45:00 EST

Genetic engineering is coming to the forests.

While the practice of splicing foreign DNA into food crops has become common in corn and soy, few companies or researchers have dared to apply genetic engineering to plants that provide an essential strut of the U.S. economy, trees.

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Chemical Exposure Linked to Attention Deficit Disorder in Children

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST

Children exposed in the womb to chemicals in cosmetics and fragrances are more likely to develop behavioral problems commonly found in children with attention deficit disorders, according to a study of New York City school-age children published Thursday. [More]

Have Wallet Cards Helped Fish?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:00:08 EST

Americans eat more fish than ever. We now gobble up more than two million tons of seafood a year compared to just half a million at the dawn of the 20th century. Not only are there more of us, we're also eating more fish--globally.

That's led to a global collapse of many fisheries , such as cod in the North Atlantic. To help forestall this ecological catastrophe a variety of sustainable-seafood certification schemes have emerged. And the Monterey Bay Aquarium released its first seafood wallet card in 2000.

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Sewer or Septic?: When It Comes to Sewage, Most People Prefer to Share the Burden

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST

Dear EarthTalk: What’s better for the local ecology, sewers or septic tanks? --T. H., Darien, Conn.

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Bacteria Transformed into Biofuel Refineries

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:31:00 EST

The bacteria responsible for most cases of food poisoning in the U.S. has been turned into an efficient biological factory to make chemicals , medicines and, now, fuels. Chemical engineer Jay Keasling of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have manipulated the genetic code of Escherichia coli , a common gut bacteria, so that it can chew up plant-derived sugar to produce diesel and other hydrocarbons, according to results published in the January 28 issue of Nature . ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) [More]

Fixing the Global Nitrogen Problem (preview)

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST

Billions of people today owe their lives to a single discovery now a century old. In 1909 German chemist Fritz Haber of the University of Karlsruhe figured out a way to transform nitrogen gas--which is abundant in the atmosphere but nonreactive and thus unavailable to most living organisms--into ammonia, the active ingredient in synthetic fertilizer. The world’s ability to grow food exploded 20 years later, when fellow German scientist Carl Bosch developed a scheme for implementing Haber’s idea on an industrial scale.

Over the ensuing decades new factories transformed ton after ton of industrial ammonia into fertilizer, and today the Haber-Bosch invention commands wide respect as one of the most significant boons to public health in human history. As a pillar of the green revolution, synthetic fertilizer enabled farmers to transform infertile lands into fertile fields and to grow crop after crop in the same soil without waiting for nutrients to regenerate naturally. As a result, global population skyrocketed from 1.6 billion to six billion in the 20th century.

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Buying Your First (Energy-Efficient) Home

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Krista and Micah Fuerst were looking near here to buy their first place together, and had narrowed it down to two houses: One built 25 years ago of standard materials, the other brand new and built to strict energy efficiency standards. [More]

Better Mileage Now--Improving the Combustion Engine (preview)

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST

Demand for automobiles is rising worldwide. So is concern about greenhouse gas emissions. In response, scientists and engineers are working diligently to perfect new power plants for future vehicles, including battery and hydrogen fuel-cell electric cars. Although these and other alternatives show great promise for the long term, perhaps the single greatest way to reduce fossil-fuel consumption in the near term is to further improve today’s dominant transportation power plant: the gasoline internal-combustion (IC) engine.

Fortunately, efficiency can be raised in a number of ways, notably, better control over the air-fuel mixture entering the combustion chamber, over the way gasoline is ignited there, and over the mechanical systems that harness that energy. These can improve traditional automobiles as well as gasoline-electric hybrid models.

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Is Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:10:00 EST

Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth.

Interest in algae-based biofuels has blossomed in the past year, sparking major investments from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. , and it has gained steam on Capitol Hill, as well. But the nascent industry has major environmental hurdles to overcome before ramping up production, according to research published this week in Environmental Science and Technology .

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Environmental ills? It's consumerism, stupid

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:00:00 EST

Two typical German shepherds kept as pets in Europe or the U.S. consume more in a year than the average person living in Bangladesh, according to research by sustainability experts Brenda and Robert Vale of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. So are the world's environmental ills really a result of the burgeoning number of humans on the planet--predicted to reach at least nine billion people by 2050? Or is it more due to the fact that although the human population has doubled in the past 50 years, we have increased our use of resources fourfold ? [More]

Smart Grid Could Shave U.S. Emissions by 2030

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

The electricity sector could shave up to 18 percent off its energy use and carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 by aggressively embracing smart-grid technologies, according to a new analysis.

Smart grid-related savings would come from a number of factors, most significantly from a "conservation effect" as consumers incorporate feedback on their energy use, the study found. Additional factors include the use of power diagnostics to tune homes and smaller commercial buildings and increased use of wind and solar generation .

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U.S. Supreme Court turns down Michigan's request to block Asian carp invasion of Great Lakes

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:12:00 EST

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would not help stop the spread of invasive Asian carp by ordering the closure of locks between Chicago-area waterways and Lake Michigan. A suit from Michigan and four other states, plus Ontario, had requested closing the locks to block Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan and damaging its ecosystem, as they have done elsewhere in the country. [More]