By Martin LaMonica

The future of green technology is algae-cultivating buildings, artificial trees, and lots of white roofs, according to the U.K.’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

The group on Thursday released a report that recommends governments fund research on geoengineering, or large-scale fixes for climate change. The report, a year in the making, is targeted at policymakers and is meant to inspire engineers to develop ways to cut greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

London, if it gets an algae-growing makeover.

As concern grows over climate change, a number of geoengineering ideas have been proposed, including placing mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or shooting sulfur particles into the stratosphere, which would also have a cooling effect.

However, in its analysis, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers found that most promising geoengineering techniques can be done on Earth. It argues that a handful of technologies be deployed at large scale, along with other strategies, to mitigate the effects of climate change.

At the top of the list are artificial trees, which are mechanical devices that can absorb carbon dioxide from the air faster than trees and then sequester that gas underground.

The institution’s report refers to the research done by Columbia University Professor Klaus Lackner, who is researching the concept and materials to absorb large amounts of CO2. Also required are underground storage formations, such as depleted oil wells. At a cost of $20,000 per tree, the institution concludes that it’s the most practical approach.

Cultivating algae to make liquid fuel is one of the most active areas of research in biofuels. The institution recommends that algae be incorporated into buildings so algae can be grown at a large scale.

How artificial trees, which capture carbon from the air, could be deployed alongside wind turbines.

(Credit: Institution of Mechanical Engineers)Engineers envision that long plastic tubes, called photobioreactors, be integrated into building designs or retrofitted onto existing skyscrapers.

Algae would grow from pumped-in carbon dioxide and sunlight and be harvested for use either as a liquid fuel to run in a combined heat-and-power unit or turned into biochar, or charcoal used as a soil conditioner that also sequesters carbon from the air.

Finally, the institution says that buildings should be retrofitted with reflective roofs to deflect the sun’s rays. In the past months, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has publicly touted this relatively low-tech approach, which was studied in-depth at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory last year.

Although proposing billions of white roofs doesn’t appear to be controversial, many other geoengineering ideas are. For example, scientists have warned about the environmental impact--or effectiveness--of “seeding” the ocean with iron to spur growth of plankton to sequester carbon.

In anticipation of a report on geoengineering from the U.K.’s Royal Society next week, watchdog ETC Group warned against unintended consequences from large-scale projects. “Even the most careful computer models won’t be able to predict what will happen if an experiment is scaled-up and moved out of doors,” the group said in a statement Friday. See post here.

Potential new fiascos in the long history of unfortunate enviro driven consequences like the banning of DDT to protect the songbirds that resulted in 40,000,000 unnecessary malaria deaths, the lobbying against genetically modified seeds that can be disease, insect and drought resistant and enable food to be grown successfully more places, the banning of harmless CFCs and replacement with even more potent HFCs due to faulty science by ‘scientists’ like Susan Solomon and Ralph Cicerone, the pushing of ethanol from corn resulting in a spike in corn prices and food riots worldwide, a company (GE- the Green Enron) that pioneered in the incandescent light bulb that brightened our lives lobbied successfully for compact flourescent bulbs that contain mercury that will contaminate landfills (see here why LED’s make more sense for the future), the prevention of tree stand thinning and brush removal that inevitably leads to worse wildfires like those now burning in California (see photo taken from JPL lab below), litigation leading to cancellation of proposed new fossil fuel and nuclear power plants designed to meet ever growing energy needs virtually assuring a future of brownouts and blackouts, and if we are not able to stop it, with Cap-and-Tax or EPA regulations, a huge increase in taxes for all Americans, a major loss of jobs, and a second far worse economic collapse.

By Krystle Russin on Heartland.org

Refrigerant chemicals that have replaced substances banned for allegedly harming the ozone layer are poised to become a major source of global warming, according to a study conducted by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

By the year 2050, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - which replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) banned by the Montreal Protocol - may exacerbate carbon dioxide-related global warming by 19 percent, according to the study.

Unintended Consequences

Since the Montreal Protocol took effect in 1989, HFCs have replaced CFCs as the chemicals of choice for refrigeration and air conditioning. A decade later, there appears to be little difference in seasonal and annual fluctuations of the Earth’s ozone layer, but the greater prevalence of HFCs has the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA) worried about global warming.

“Increased use and emission of HFCs could largely undo the climate benefits already achieved by the Montreal Protocol,” said NEAA in an issue summary accompanying the study.

“The climatologists’ opinion was we’ve got to stop using CFCs because they’re affecting the ozone and increasing the greenhouse effect. Yet we’ve replaced it with another chemical that is still a greenhouse gas. We traded one greenhouse gas for another greenhouse gas. Anyone should’ve seen this coming,” said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Valuable Products Banned

“CFC was the original refrigerant”, Burnett explained. “It was better than anything else on the market because it had a lot of virtues. It wasn’t toxic to humans. It was a good insulator. It worked well and wasn’t harmful, and then we started worrying about the ozone layer. There are no refrigerators or venting at the poles, and CFCs don’t seem to break up ozone layers over the cities where they are released. I always found that puzzling.”

Environmental policy analyst Drew Thornley said, “This latest research highlights the potential unintended consequences of government regulation, and it further supports the position that drastic measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions are premature, insofar as research is ongoing and current questions remain unanswered and new questions emerge.

“As an alternative to hasty, sweeping, climate-fighting mandates and regulations, a better approach is to take whatever time is necessary to continue important research and gather the information that will put us in a better position to protect the environment and consumers,” Thornley added.

Read more here. H/T TWTW.

The Age

Trading of emission permits around the world will become a financial rort that fails to reduce carbon emissions - and will ultimately be scrapped in favour of a simple carbon tax, a former senior official in the Clinton administration has forecast.

Robert Shapiro, former US undersecretary of commerce and author of Futurecast, predicted that the US Senate would reject the emissions trading scheme proposed by President Obama, which is now before it.

Speaking by video to the Trade 2020 conference convened by Austrade and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, Dr Shapiro said ‘cap and trade’ systems as proposed by the US and the Australian governments to limit carbon dioxide emissions and allow trade in permits do not work as intended.

“Cap and trade has proved very vulnerable to vested interests, and therefore too weak to deliver the necessary emission reductions’’, he said. ‘’Cap and trade creates trillions of dollars of new financial instruments to be traded, and subjected to the next financial fads. China and India will never accept a cap and trade regime.’’

A better solution is to impose a carbon tax on emissions and return the revenue from it to households so people are not made worse off, Dr Shapiro said. A similar approach in Sweden has cut emissions there by 8 per cent since 1990 while GDP rose about 40 per cent.

CEDA research director Michael Porter strongly supported Dr Shapiro. CEDA today will release a report urging the Rudd Government to scrap its emissions trading scheme in favour of a carbon tax.

Dr Porter warned that a carbon market would not be trading carbon, ‘’it’ll be trading derivatives’’. International trade in permits will mean the integrity of a permit is only as good as the weakest supervisory regime.

Economists are divided over which is the better way to fight climate change. Emissions trading has won widespread support because it is a market-based solution that, in theory, will deliver certain emission reductions at the lowest cost, as companies that can’t reduce emissions cheaply instead buy permits from companies that can. Read more here.

New Study: Cap-and-Trade will Undermine U.S. Energy Security
By Andrew Maykuth

Oil refiners, including regional giant Sunoco Inc., say that proposed federal legislation aimed at curbing global warming could impair fuel production nationally and in the region, where it is a mainstay of the economy.

A study released this week by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry’s trade group, projects that the cap-and-trade bill in its current form could cause a 17 percent reduction in U.S. refinery output by 2030. The reduction would be made up by doubling fuel imports from foreign refiners, who may not face climate restrictions.

API said the analysis by EnSys Energy shows the “devastating” effect the American Clean Energy and Security Act would have on U.S. jobs and energy security. While the proposed bill would dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from U.S. refineries, there would be only a slight worldwide reduction as fuel production shifted overseas, the study said.

The study was released as the Senate prepares to consider the climate-change bill, sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.) and Ed Markey (D., Mass.). The bill narrowly passed the House in June, and it is likely to be substantially amended by the Senate.

Cap-and-trade is a method to control greenhouse gases by creating a market for emissions permits. The government would set a cap on emissions, but emitters that don’t use their full quota could trade their excess permits to companies needing them. The caps would become gradually more restrictive.

Refiners complain because the proposed legislation would force them to become big buyers of the permits. Though refiners emit about 4 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases, they are held responsible for 44 percent of all emissions, including the exhaust from automobiles, planes, trains, and heating oil. But the bill would allocate only 2.25 percent of the permits to refiners.

“In its current form, the legislation will likely increase the cost of domestic refining so much - through the need to purchase credits, higher electricity costs, and the financial carrying costs to actually buy the allowances - that it will be cheaper to import gasoline, diesel, and other products from overseas,” said Thomas P. Golembeski, spokesman for Sunoco, which is based in Philadelphia.

“Eventually, we would expect that higher domestic refining costs would force some U.S. refining capacity to close, which would mean the loss of jobs, tighter fuel supply, and higher fuel costs for consumers,” Golembeski said.

Supporters of the cap-and-trade legislation say it would force a transition to clean energy by imposing market conditions that would penalize imported fossil fuels and reward development of renewable energy.

The API study said that in its worst-case scenario, the proposed law could reduce annual U.S. refining investments by up to $89.7 billion, reduce refinery utilization rates from 83.3 percent to as low as 63.4 percent, and would cut refinery production by up to 4.4 million barrels a day. Refineries on the Gulf Coast and in California would be hit hardest.

Sunoco, which has three refineries in the Philadelphia area, is not a member of API, but Golembeski said the company was aware of the study. He said Sunoco prefers a carbon tax levied directly upon sources of greenhouse gases, rather than the more complex cap-and-trade system.

“A transparent and direct carbon tax would be, in our view, a much more workable solution,” Golembeski said. Read more here.