• Reducing Carbon Emissions (Oracle Utilities Blog)

  Oracle blog post alking up the need for smart grids to support rollout of electric vehicles

  tags: greenmonktv, smart grid, uk, electric vehicles

• Is China really going green? – Telegraph

  At Dabancheng, a few miles outside the city, great forests of windmills stretch to the horizon, their blades beating out a lazy rhythm that belies the sudden urgency with which China’s rulers are now investing in renewable energy.The speed with which China is now ramping up its commitment to alternative energies has caught even the most optimistic analysts by surprise, with new green edicts being issued from Beijing on an almost weekly basis.

  tags: chna, stimulus, green energy, renewables, wind energy, greenmonktv

• EPA Moves to Regulate Contaminated Runoff From Power Plants – washingtonpost.com

  Faced with new evidence that utilities across the country are dumping toxic sludge into waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to impose new restrictions on the level of contaminants power plants can discharge.

  Plants in Florida, Pennsylvania and several other states have flushed wastewater with levels of selenium and other toxins that far exceed the EPA’s freshwater and saltwater standards aimed at protecting aquatic life, according to data the agency has collected over the past few years

  tags: epa, utilities, selenium, freshwater, fish, birds, people, greenmonktv

• A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet

  Balaji Natarajan is a senior IT strategist for Capgemini, focusing on smart grid, mobile computing, and unified communications.

  History is a great teacher. The Internet took decades to evolve and take shape. Now upon us is a more critical challenge: how to build and sustain a smarter power grid. The tech community is already starting to initiate significant efforts to address this challenge, but here are some thoughts for how we can learn from the history of how the Internet was built, which will help us move into the fast-lane to tackle this massive task and monumental opportunity.

  tags: smart grid, electricity 2.0, demand response, greenmonktv

• A Military Shade of Green | EcoSalon – The Green Gathering

  these days, military green is more about embracing green energy and green technologies than the color of a uniform.

  tags: military, bootprint, greenmonktv

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• Greentech Media | Instant Messenger of the Smart Grid

  EnerNoc has released software that keeps air conditioners, motors and other devices in constant contact with its network operations center. It’s a first in “presence-enabled” technology for the smart grid, the company says.

  tags: enernoc, demand response, greenmonktv, smart grid

• ‘Green’ lightbulbs poison workers – Times Online

  In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

  Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

  tags: mercury, cfl, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, china, greenmonktv

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• IBM Press room – 2009-04-30 IBM to Accelerate Smart Infrastructure Initiatives with Financing – United States

  IBM , announced today it is adding a significant financing component to its already extensive efforts towards the development of smart, industry-leading technology solutions tied to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). I

  tags: ibm, ARRA, greenmonktv

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• PERU: Where the Poor Pay More for Water

  LOMAS DE MANCHAY, Peru, Apr 9 (IPS) – In Lomas de Manchay, an area of slum-covered hills outside of the Peruvian capital that is home to 50,000 people, mainly poor indigenous migrants from the highlands, clean water is worth gold – almost literally.

  Local residents of the shantytown pay 3.22 dollars per cubic metre of water, compared to just 45 cents of a dollar that is paid a few blocks away, across the main avenue, in Rinconada del Lago, one of Lima’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.

  tags: water, peru, greenmonktv

• Eco Tech: World’s Largest Solar Power Tower Begins Operation – Ecofriend

  The world’s largest solar power tower plant developed by Abengoa Solar has begun operation, after a successful three-day testing period. Called the PS20, the solar power tower plant surpassed the predicted power output during the tests which further validated the high potential of power tower technology.

  tags: abengoa, solar concentrating, solar thermal tower, greenmonktv

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• Personal Health – Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat – NYTimes.com

  Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.

  The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.

  tags: meat, red meat, cancer, heart disease, greenmonktv

• Arctic CO2 levels growing at an ‘unprecedented rate’, say scientists | Environment | guardian.co.uk

  The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to the latest figures released by an internationally regarded measuring station in the Arctic.Levels of the gas at the Zeppelin research station on Svalbard, northern Norway, last week peaked at over 397 parts per million (ppm), an increase of more than 2.5ppm on 2008. They have since begun to reduce and today stand at 393.7ppm. Prior to the industrial revolution, CO2 levels were around 280ppm.

  tags: co2, carbon dioxide, atmospheric co2, greenmonktv

• New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica | Environment | Reuters

  An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice — bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City — has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.

  tags: ice, ice melt, antarctica, antarctic, ice shelf, global warming, climate change, greenmonktv

• We Believe Global Warming is Happening, Just Not Necessarily to Us : TreeHugger

  A survey of 2,164 adults by George Mason University and the Yale Project on Climate Change discovered some of the distressing ways in which we humans just can’t see to think very long term: just 32 percent of the Americans surveyed believe global warming will personally harm them “a great deal” or a “moderate amount.” Contrast that with the same group’s opinion on the rest of the animal kingdom: nearly twice the number of respondents, or 62%, believed that plant and animal species would be harmed by climate change. In fact, as the graphic shows, people somewhat ironically believed that everyone around them – their families, communities, and countries – will be more in harm’s way than they themselves. How’s that for optimistic, (perhaps even magical?) thinking?

  tags: climate change, global warming, greenmonk, survey, greogr mason university

• Aboriginal Fires Fight Climate Change | Popular Science

  Aborigines once commonly used fire-stick farming to establish a patchwork of habitats in different stages of growth, and to continually create new environments for small game that could be hunted. The practice died out as European colonization swept the continent.

  tags: aborigines, fire, wildfires, climate change, greenmonktv

• Europe’s biggest onshore wind farm to be ready early | Environment | Reuters

  ScottishPower, a unit of Spain’s Iberdrola, said on Monday its Whitelee wind farm near Glasgow is to be completed ahead of schedule in the next few weeks.

  ScottishPower Renewables said all of the 140 turbines at the farm would be ready in the near future, raising its capacity to 322 megawatt — enough to power more than 180,000 homes. It would be Europe’s largest onshore wind farm.

  tags: scottishpower, iberdrola, wind energy, wind farm, greenmonktv

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• Another step towards Kingsnorth – politics.co.uk

  New coal-fired power stations form part of Britain’s “low-carbon future”, Ed Miliband told the Commons this lunchtime.

  His pledge came as he outlined proposals to MPs for the construction of new conventional coal-fired stations, including Kingsnorth.

  Mr Miliband said permission would be granted on the condition they can be retrofitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology within five years of 2020 – subject to the technology available

  tags: kingsnorth, ccs, coal, carbon capture and storage, greenmonktv

• Shai Agassi’s bold plan for electric cars | Video on TED.com

  Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

  tags: better place, shai agassi, electric vehicles, greenmonktv

• George Monbiot: Miliband’s coal decision is cynical and meaningless | Environment | guardian.co.uk

  If coal plants go ahead on the condition that their emissions will one day be abated through carbon capture and storage technology, then emissions are a certainty

  tags: ccs, carbon capture and storage, kingsnorth, coal, greenmonktv

• Andrew Purvis on the decline of seafood | Life and style | The Observer

  Imagine a world without seafood for supper. It’s nearer than you think.

  tags: seafood, over-fishing, fish, fishing, greenmonktv

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• Q&A: Agassi’s Better Place idea–brilliant or nuts? | Green Tech – CNET News

  nobody doubts that Agassi is a visionary with good intentions–to reduce the world’s dependence on oil to help preserve the planet. People just wonder if he can make a business of it.

  tags: better place, shai agassi, ev, electric vehicle, phev, greenmonktv

• Bolivia: water people of Andes face extinction | World news | The Guardian

  Climate change robs Uru Chipaya, indigenous Bolivian people, of water – a lifeline that had sustained them for millennia

  tags: water, bolivia, climate change, glacier melt, greenmonktv

• Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate – NYTimes.com

  For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming

  But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

  tags: global climate coalition, climate change, ipcc, greenmonktv, greenhouse gas, co2

• Bottled Water Sales Flatten During Recession : NPR

  After years of double-digit increases, bottled water sales have stopped rising. Industry analysts say the economy is driving the change, but they also say environmentalists may be having an effect.

  tags: water, bottled water, sales, greenmonktv

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• Disabilities in China’s polluted Shanxi – BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific |

  Hong Wei was born with an extra thumb on his right hand. His elder sister Lixia, who’s 14, was born with a twisted left foot and walks with a heavy limp.

  Like many people in Shanxi, this family is too poor to go to the doctors. The parents don’t know why their children were born with defects. They’re simply left to guess.

  “The air isn’t good around here,” says Li San San. “When it’s bad, it’s difficult to breathe, it looks gloomy and smoggy out there.”

  tags: china, pollution, air quality, greenmonktv

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• 100 Ways to Make Your Library a Little Greener – Learn-gasm

  Librarians need to be on the constant cutting edge in terms of technology, researching, web tools and even architecture and design. But libraries are also a great place to educate the public and your students about the environment, from eco-friendly lifestyle choices to organizations that promote green causes. Here are 100 ways to make your library a little greener.

  tags: library, green, greenmonktv

• Damage To Forests From Climate Change Could Cost The Planet Its Major Keeper Of Greenhouse Gases, Study Warns

  The critical role of forests as massive “sinks” for absorbing greenhouse gases is “at risk of being lost entirely”

  tags: deforestation, carbon sink, sink, greenhouse, gas, forests, greenmonktv

• Arizona surges ahead with new $1B solar plant » VentureBeat

  Arizona, already a dominant force in the solar sector, is adding another $1 billion solar plant to its repertoire. The state just struck a deal with Albiasa Solar to build the 200-megawatt concentrated solar facility near Kingman, Ariz. — a city in the northwest part of the state very close to the California and Nevada borders

  tags: solar, Concentrated solar-thermal, arizona, albiasa solar, albiasa, greenmonktv

• Why Earth Day Matters to Microsoft – Microsoft On The Issues

  Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which focuses on three core areas:

  Using information technology to dramatically improve energy efficiency
  Accelerating research breakthroughs and
  Demonstrating responsible environmental leadership at home.

  tags: microsoft, rob bernard, sustainability, greenmonktv

• Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, David MacKay

  A free e-book (or available to buy on paper) about Sustainable Energy

  tags: sustainable energy, energy, sustainability, greenmonktv

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• Warning as biggest rivers decline – MSN Environment UK

  The world’s largest rivers have declined over the last 50 years, with significant changes found in about a third of them, scientists said.

  tags: rivers, climate change, flow, greenmonktv

• Climate change means shortfalls in Colorado River water deliveries

  The Colorado River system supplies water to tens of millions of people and millions of acres of farmland, and has never experienced a delivery shortage. But if human-caused climate change continues to make the region drier, scheduled deliveries will be missed 60-90 percent of the time by the middle of this century, according to a pair of climate researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

  tags: climate change, colorado river, greenmonktv

• We Must Seize the Energy Opportunity or Slip Further Behind

  nearly 40 percent of China’s proposed $586 billion stimulus plan—$221 billion over two years—is going toward public investment in renewable energy, low-carbon vehicles, high-speed rail, an advanced electric grid, efficiency improvements, and other water-treatment and pollution controls.

  tags: china, stimulus plan, renewable energy, smart grid, greenmonktv

• China’s wind-power boom to outpace nuclear by 2020 | Markets | Reuters

  China will have 100 gigawatts of wind-power capacity by 2020, a senior energy official said on Monday, more than three times the 30 GW target the government laid down in an energy strategy drawn up just 18 months ago.

  tags: china, wind energy, greenmonktv

• Climate change will overload humanitarian system, warns Oxfam report | Environment | guardian.co.uk

  Emergency organisations could be overwhelmed within seven years by the rising number of people in poor countries affected by floods, droughts, heatwaves, wild fires, storms, landslides and other climate hazards.

  tags: oxfam, climate change, floods, drought, heatwave, wildfires, storms, landslides, greenmonktv

• South Korea lights the way on carbon emissions with its £23bn green deal | Environment | The Guardian

  Seoul’s huge (£23bn) financial stimulus package pledges 81% for a swath of environmental projects. But activists fear a wave of construction may increase the country’s carbon footprint

  tags: south korea, stimulus, energy efficiency, greenmonktv

• Switch to renewable energy could save £13bn a year | Environment | The Guardian

  Britain could save up to £12.6bn a year in imports of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal by 2020 if it embarks on a large- scale programme of energy efficiency and renewable technologies including wind power and biomass

  tags: biomass, renewables, wind energy, greenmonktv

• The Green Issue – Batteries Not Included – NYTimes.com

  An interesting article about Better Place and Shai Agassi

  tags: better place, electric vehicle

• Amazing new windfarms of the future – Science and Health Blog – Mirror.co.uk

  The next generation of windfarms may not look like anything we have seen so far.

  Turbines of the future could have vertical wings like giant washing lines spinning high above the ocean.

  tags: wind turbines, wind farm, greenmonktv

• REpower Systems AG: Press Release

  German wind turbine manufacturer now has the most powerful wind turbine in the world in its portfolio with the further development of the model series to the REpower 6M

  tags: wind turbine, 6mw, greenmonktv

• More motorway lights to be turned off to cut carbon footprint

  The UK Highways Agency is trying to cut its carbon footprint by turning off selected motorway lights around the country

  tags: uk, motorways, carbon footprint, greenmonktv

• Major study into the demise of bees is announced | stv News

  The number of bees in the UK has fallen between 10 and 15 per cent over the past two years. A new study hopes to help stop the decline.

  tags: bee, bees, climate change, global warming, greenmonktv

• Your Industry News – Giant windfarm could be England’s biggest onshore windfarm

  AN area of land near Fakenham appears to be in line for what could be the largest onshore windfarm in England.

  tags: greenmonktv, wind farm, wind energy, fakenham

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