This is a selection of recent popular blog articles aggregated on Greenedia.com, where you will find the best blogs from the world of green media, as well as video uploads, podcasts, and blog authoring.
EU Releases Environment Scorecard
Treehugger blogged this week on the self-scoring the EU released on their progress toward Kyoto emissions and energy goals. The outlook was not that great, altogether, though progress has been made in the appropriate direction, unlike the US and Japan, which also received scores, and seem to be heading in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, according to the scorecard, the EU is still not on track to meet those goals.
They reproduced a chart from the report in the post, giving a clear indication of how the various initiatives are doing, as percentage changes from a baseline calculation. In fact, the chart shows the only current hope for success in the EU of meeting their goals, in greenhouse gas emission reduction. Other areas, such as electricity from renewables and biodiversity, do not appear to be on track and are a significant concern for the EU.
Record Oil Prices and President Bush's Uninformed State
Over at Clean Energy, Jesse Jenkins points out that oil has recently set a record, beating the inflation-adjusted previous high of 1980. At $103.05 last week, oil beat the previous record by about fifty cents, and ushered in a new wave of speculation that gas at the pump could top $4 per gallon this spring when reformulated gasoline starts flowing from the refineries.
Of more concern to Jenkins in the post itself, is that US President Bush seems to be unaware that such a dramatic spike in gas prices could be coming so soon, according to industry analysts. Jenkins advocates, among other things, a re-investment of the subsidies currently going to oil companies in solutions for the growing fossil fuel crisis.
Ultracapacitors Could Spell The End of Batteries
With everyone looking for better ways to store electricity, EcoGeek points out news that ultracapacitors (or "ultracaps") may have been the subject of a breakthrough that would move them past batteries in preference. The auto industry has long considered them unsuitable for electric vehicle implementations on account of their relatively low energy density when compared to batteries--just able to store 5% of what a same-sized Lithium-Ion battery could store.
The breakthrough, as EcoGeek goes on to say, comes from an MIT research project into nanoscale ultracapacitors which could store up to half of what a Lithium-Ion battery does. While the technology is not ready to fly out of the lab into a car just yet, the promise of continued research indicates that just such a development may be just around the corner.
No Savings in Falling Back and Springing Forward
With the "spring forward" of daylight savings time just around the corner, GristMill unearths a report that suggests that the supposed energy savings ofthe annual springing forward and falling back don't actually amount to much. The theory goes that with an extra hour of daylight in the evenings, we'll use less electricity in lighting our homes, and thus save some energy. But recently, with the state of Indiana electing to adopt Daylight Savings statewide, where only a few counties had been on-board with it before, an opportunity was realized to study the theory in the real world.
Delving deeper, GristMill discovers that not only aren't there any savings in the process, but it's actually a waste of money and energy over maintaining standard time year round. Researchers at University of California-Santa Barbara discovered that spending on energy increased by $8.6 million for the state of Indiana alone while on Daylight Savings--not a savings at all but, as GristMill says, a "wastings."
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