Geothermal Energy Will Help Power Anaheim, California

After six years of research, Raser Technologies will deliver geothermal energy to the city of Anaheim, California. The geothermal generator, which is located in Beaver County, Utah, will produce 10 megawatts of energy, or enough to power 9,000 homes. It should be completed by October. Anaheim’s new energy source will put it on the fast track to reaching 20 percent of its total energy needs through renewable energy by 2012.

The Raser geothermal model is much more consumer-friendly than previous models, as it operates at the relatively low temperature of 165 F. And a lot is riding on its success. According to Merrill Lynch’s managing director of corporate finance Roy Piskadlo, “The success of this project will be important, because with this new low-temperature technology, the range of potential commercial sites is much wider.”

Not only is the low temperature of the Raser model revolutionary, but so its existence in the first place. The Beaver County project, which draws on 640 acres of land, is the first geothermal project to be built in Utah in approximately 20 years.

Most importantly, Raser believes that there will be a very low risk of water degradation in the project’s reservoir, thus ensuring the sustainability of the energy source. And more areas of the country should begin to see the fruits of Raser’s labor sometime in the near future—the company holds the rights to 225,000 acres of land in multiple states.

Hopefully, Raser’s project will help cities and town that can’t rely on wind or solar energy reach their sustainability goals sooner rather than later.

Photo Credit: Raser Technologies

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Living in a world without waste

By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News

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Zero waste: The Japanese island where the rubbish collectors never come

The Mayor of Kamikatsu, a small community in the hills of eastern Japan, has urged politicians around the world to follow his lead and make their towns "Zero Waste".

He told BBC News that all communities could learn from Kamikatsu, where residents have to compost all their food waste and sort other rubbish into 34 different categories.

Residents say the scheme has prompted them to cut down on waste generally and food waste in particular.

If the policy spread, it would reduce the amount of food waste, and so take some of the pressure off high food prices.

Kamikatsu may be a backwater in the wooded hills and rice terraces of south-eastern Japan but it's become a world leader on waste policy.

There are no waste collections from households at all. People have to take full responsibility for everything they throw away.

It's a good idea to send things back to the earth so I support it Hatsue Katayama

Kitchen waste has to be composted. Non-food waste is processed either in local shops which accept goods for recycling or in Kamikatsu's Zero Waste Centre. There, people have to sort their unwanted items into 34 different boxes for recycling.

Residents have to sort plastic bottles (used for fruit juice, for example) from PET (polyethylene teraphthalate) bottles (used for mineral water) because PET is more valuable when it is separated out.

There are specific boxes for pens, razors and the sort of Styrofoam trays on which meat is often purchased. These have to be washed and dried.

The scheme was adopted when councillors realised it was much cheaper than incineration - even if the incinerator was used to generate power.

Winning idea

Many locals are enthusiastic participants. Take Kikue Nii, who strips labels off bottles then washes and dries them before sending them to recycling.

She takes her other everyday waste to the local shop where she receives a lottery ticket in return for a bag of cans.

The community uses incentives to encourage recylcing

She has won a £5 food voucher four times. It's not a huge amount but it's better than nothing.

She is also a big fan of composting.

"I think I produce less waste because I have to compost it," she says.

"When I can't use the whole vegetable or meat, I try to cook it again with wine and so on. It makes a very good soup. Everyone should have a composter if they can."

Her neighbours Fumikazu Katayama and his wife Hatsue are ardent composters, too.

Hatsue says: "I have to do it every day; it's certainty a bit of work. But it's a good idea to send things back to the earth so I support it. I just do it naturally now; it's part of the routine."

The Katayamas take the rest of their waste to the Zero Waste Centre for sorting - carrying the waste bag between them.

Global question

Questions remain about the scheme. Some of the composters are boosted by electric power, which creates greenhouse gas emissions.

And it's possible that the savings in greenhouse gases from recycling are negated by the need for people to drive to the Zero Waste Centre.

Old curtains or kimonos are expertly converted into bags

Natsuko Matsuoka, one of the originators of the centre, disagrees - she says people generally tie in the journey with a weekly shopping trip.

A poll showed that although the Zero Waste policy has many admirers, 40% of people weren't happy about all aspects of the scheme.

The Mayor Kasamatsu Kasuichi is undeterred: "We should consider what is right and what is wrong, and I believe it is wrong to send a truck to collect the waste and burn it.

"That is bad for the environment. So whether I get support or not, I believe I should persuade people to support my policy."

Now he invites other politicians around the world to follow suit.

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Researchers Find Ancient Evidence of 'Snowball Earth'

LSU scientist Huiming Bao, along with colleagues from UCLA and China, recently discovered some of the first atmospheric evidence in support of the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis. This theory suggests that Earth was entirely covered by ice during the Cryogenian period, which took place from about 790 to 630 million years ago. Their findings were reported in the May 22 issue of Nature.

Bao and his group used a new parameter called “sulfate oxygen-17 anomaly” to measure atmospheric records found in mineral sulphate deposits. “My group specializes in measuring these anomalies – very few other groups do,” said Bao. “This puts us in an extremely good position for uncovering previously unknown information.”

These oxygen-17 anomalies are usually not measured by scientists who study Earth rocks because they were originally believed to be exclusively extra-terrestrial in nature, coming only from specific types of asteroids. Over the years, Bao’s group has worked on many extremely dry deserts on Earth and shown that there are a large range of oxygen-17 anomalies among desert salts that record atmospheric reactions.

All of the previous documented anomalies are positive, meaning that there is an excess in oxygen-17 isotopes. This finding, however, reveals a large depletion in oxygen-17 content in some of the sulfate minerals. These are the first oxygen-17 depletions, or negative anomalies, found in Earth minerals. What is even more striking is the timing of the negative anomalies – there is a spike in the depletion right at the time when a global glaciation came to an abrupt end approximately 635 million years ago.

To account for the data, Bao and his colleagues proposed that this depletion spike was caused by an extremely high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at that time, at least 40 times the modern level. That is what the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis predicted when the entire oceans were frozen over for millions of years. Bao and his colleagues will still have to rule out other scenarios before calling their evidence a “smoking gun” for the theory. “But we have found a new way to look into the details of very old glaciations events that other approaches couldn’t,” said Bao. “Using this new parameter, we should be able to read from the rock record the dynamics of the glaciations as well as the impact to biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere of our Earth system.”

In light of the increasing environmental stresses humans have placed on Earth, Bao said that there is a critical need to understand how a complex system like Earth’s can be expected to react.

“There is an old saying that the best way to know a person’s character is to put him or her under pressure and see how he reacts,” said Bao. “This is the same situation. The best way to learn more about our Earth system is to see how it responded to extreme conditions in the past.”

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