CleanTechnica

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has just uncovered yet another reason not to love so called “clean coal:” the agency has determined that coal mining caused the ground to shift under the Ryerson Station Dam in Greene County, which in turn caused increased seepage and cracking in the concrete structure.  The 62-acre lake behind the dam was drained as soon as the damage was discovered in 2005, to prevent possible collapse and flooding.

So, add massive infrastructure failure to the growing list of messes that “clean” coal leaves behind, including mountaintop coal mining and coal ash spills, and permanent disasters such as the underground coal mine fire that has bedeviled the Pennsylvania town of Centralia since 1962.  New technology may scrub more pollutants from power plants, but an army of scrubbers won’t make coal a truly clean, sustainable fuel for the future.

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As a follow up to the post from Sunday (Social Media Day of Action on Mountaintop Removal), this is a reminder that today is a big day of social media activism to stop mountaintop removal coal mining!

Visit Rainforest Action Network’s website to join thousands of others in taking action to encourage Chase bank to stop supporting mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains.

Why?

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Recovery Act stimulus funding for a technology that will make geothermal power available in every state is being invested in Senator Inhofe’s Oklahoma by the Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Program, in a $3 million R&D program to increase the volume of hot rock from which heat can be extracted.

Solutions will be found to:
1. Reduce costs for drilling and well completion and
2. Increase the volume of hot rock from which heat can be extracted.

The Recovery Act stimulus funds is providing $2,399,999 to the Oklahoma project, and a company from out of state;  Impact Technologies will put up the other $600,000 of the funding, and a patent-pending system for drilling and completing micro-holes into deep 300°C geothermal reservoir rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

FERC is close to approving the Tres Amigas high-voltage interconnection hub project in Clovis, New Mexico, designed to be the first step in a renewable energy transmission superhighway.

But five groups are filing against the project. The largest, Occidental Petroleum; is asking FERC to dump the project.

Occidental Petroleum’s main argument is that it would put local power companies selling higher-priced power to consumers at a disadvantage. They couldn’t compete with marketers buying at lower prices and routing their power through Tres Amigas.
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A new way to use natural gas could cut its carbon dioxide output to zero, making it competitive with solar or wind farms.

MIT Postdoctoral associate Thomas Adams and Chemical Engineering Professor Paul I. Barton have proposed a system which produces power from natural gas without burning it, and produces a stream of clean water, and almost pure carbon dioxide, making it easy to harness for sale to cement manufacturers now developing a use for it, or pre-separating it cheaply for Carbon Capture and Storage. Read the rest of this entry »

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is setting up a big “social media day of action” this week to put the pressure on JP Morgan Chase to stop financing mountaintop removal.

The date: Thursday, February 18.

RAN asks that you blog, tweet, facebook, and email about the true tragedy that is mountaintop removal.

JP Morgan underwrites major polluter and dirty energy “activist” Massey Energy as well as new coal plants developed by American Municipal Power, Alliant Energy and a subsidiary of American Electric Power.

Take action for something you believe in! Encourage JP Morgan to stop supporting dirty energy and give more support to clean energy.

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When environmentalists ask you to do something, you might not listen. When concerned citizens ask you to do something, you might not listen. When scientists ask you to do something, you might not listen. But when your investors ask you to do something, maybe then you’ll listen.

BP and Shell investors are demanding that they leave the Canadian oil sands alone. Why? For the bottom line (as well as all of the moral environmental reasons).

But does it look like BP and Shell will actually listen?

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Two GREAT videos I just saw this week nail some of the major problems with coal and oil (other than climate change) that we are facing. Without even mentioning the controversial (though scientifically proven) issue of climate change, these videos will stir you and would even get grandma riled up to call Congress, I think.

Watch these videos! They get personal and hopefully they bring to more people’s attention that engaging in a clean energy revolution is about a lot more than the environment (since that just basically isn’t enough for some people).

It’s about freedom, health, national security, and life itself.

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Some leading businesses, Hollywood, Obama, and the public are putting the pressure on Congress to move forward with a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill, but while we wait on that, some Senators have decided to tackle some specific coal pollutants that cost the American public trillions of dollars in healthcare costs, hundreds of thousands of lives, and great human suffering every year in another way.

12 Democratic, Republican and Independent Senators have just put forth “The Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010” to protect countless Americans who are being harmed by extremely toxic coal emissions everyday.

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In an attempt to step up pressure on the developing countries to take up ambitious emissions reductions and forcing them to move to renewable energy sources for power generation, a high ranking US official has written to the World Bank recommending it to stop financing coal-fired plants in the developing countries.

In a letter written to the World Bank, the United States Executive Director at the World Bank Group, Whitney Debevoise said that multilateral development banks like the World Bank have the responsibility of building a financing framework that ensures mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthens the developing countries economies against climate change. Read the rest of this entry »