This is a reprint from last year that seemed timely. Enjoy! Mrs. E and I are putting up our Christmas tree and decorations today so I thought a blog entry on the “greening of Christmas” might be a fun idea. This blog entry will talk extensively about “Christmas” trees and decorations because the celebration of Christmas is one that most […]

Last night, Rachel Maddow had actor Mark Ruffalo on last night to talk about fracking in New York and Pennsylvania. By now, you’ve surely seen the scene from “Gasland” where the guy lights his tap water on fire. This is due to fracking wells that pump chemicals and water into the bedrock shale to fracture it and release the natural […]

Oh, lordy, lordy. This is some very good news. From the President’s Weekly Address. [T]oday, I’m announcing that the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments to two solar companies. The first is Abengoa Solar, a company that has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world right here in the United […]

As you may know , the White House is fighting the so-called Murkowski Resolution that would ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about this topic a couple of days ago. Today, Organizing for America (OFA) is getting in on the act. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, […]

In a sea of bad, very bad and even worse news on the ecological/energy front, score one for the good guys. Last Friday, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (MDNRE) denied a permit for the Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative, Inc. to build a new coal-fired power plant in Rogers City, Michigan. While the permit was NOT issued, the […]

This is probably going to look like a commercial for the Calera company but I’ll say right off the bat that I have no connection or financial interest in them. What I do have is a scientist’s interest in them. Here’s a statistic that shocked me: cement manufacturing is responsible for 5% of global CO2 emissions and in the U.S., […]

I saw this over at Daily Kos this morning in a piece by Adam Siegel (cross-posted from his most-excellent blog Get Energy Smart! NOW!) and it’s enough to make you spit: LoraxAg lines up $4.5M for clean coal gas plant. [LoraxAg] is rounding up $4.5 million in its first institutional funding, with plans to use coal gasification technology to make […]

This is actually a pretty big development in the discussion of Cap & Trade vs. Carbon Tax to rein in our country’s emissions of greenhouse gases. In a January 11, 2010 editorial in the American Chemical Society’s weekly magazine, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), Editor Rudy Baum has this to say: H.R. 2454, the 1,200-page climate-change and energy legislation passed […]

There seem to be two types of people in the world — those who think this looks totally cool: …and those who do not. Because wind energy sources are, in many cases, found on shorelines (oceans, seas, the Great Lakes, e.g.), finding ways to move the wind turbines out over the horizon has many attractive advantages: visual impact, noise, bird […]

Lots of good news coming out of Michigan this week in the area of electric vehicle manufacture. First, today marks the first day of production for GM’s lithium-ion battery pack at its Brownstown Pack Assembly Plant. “This is an important milestone for GM — and a critical step in bringing the Chevrolet Volt to market,” GM CEO and Chairman Ed […]

Mrs. E and I are putting up our Christmas tree and decorations today so I thought a blog entry on the “greening of Christmas” might be a fun idea. This diary will talk extensively about “Christmas” trees and decorations because the celebration of Christmas is one that most often involves the use of non-standard lighting decorations and trees inside the […]