Tag: CO2

Down on the farm

20040612-CRW_0583.jpg An Italian olive grove and vineyard is on its way to becoming the world’s first carbon neutral farm (they claim). According to the BBC, the Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio estate in Umbria is converting to electric vehicles (and biofuelled mini-tractors) and has installed a “solar filling station” designed by Austrian company Cellstrom, based on an array of solar panels feeding a “flow battery” – a new battery technology that allows greatly increased energy storage.

Depending on the amount of usage, the battery centre can store solar-sourced electricity for up to three days. They are working to extend that to 10 days and more, enabling the farm to continue operating through foggy days when the sun does not shine. It means that golf carts and electric bikes will become the key means of transport for farm workers and that they can all charge up at the battery centre.

Cellstrom estimates the farm can save 4,500 litres of petrol every year and reduce CO2 emissions by 10 tons.

According to Lorenzo Fasola Bologna, Monte Vibiano’s chief executive, it will take about five years to recoup the initial investment.

Flow batteries store negative and positive electrolyte solutions (based on vanadium salts) in tanks, and pump them through a reaction cell to charge and discharge. Energy storage is therefore linked to storage tank size, not the number of cells in the system. This makes them ideal as backup storage for wind and solar energy generation, making the energy available even when the sun’s not shining or the wind’s not blowing. New Scientist has a good backgrounder here (behind a paywall, sadly), and there’s also information on the Cellstrom site. Another company in the field is VRB Power Systems of Canada, who have been working with Australian-developed technology.

Back in Umbria, the Italians are covering all their carbon-neutral bases by planting 10,000 trees to mop up any excess emissions.

By the end of next year they hope to be the first farm, anywhere, to reduce their inherent net carbon footprint to zero – ie without using off-site offsetting projects. “It will be great,” says Lorenzo, “to pass on this great, green enterprise to my children and their children.”

Chez Hot Topic we have a vineyard and an olive grove, and I’m already planting trees to offset at least some of our emissions. I wonder if there’s a flow battery in an off-grid future down on our farm?

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(Just say no to the) Disko inferno

The Cape Farewell Arts Festival: artists going to Greenland to look at global warming’s frontline. KT Tunstall (above) “rocks it up” (as I believe the young folks may once have said – I’m too old to keep up now) with the house band (Disko Bay Blues) at Murphy’s Bar in Ilulissat. Or there’s Robyn Hitchcock doing Cocaine, some pictorial aperçus by Jarvis (Pulp) Cocker, even carbon dioxide art. Andy Revkin was invited but couldn’t make it. Daft bugger. I’m probably too wrinkly, but I’d have loved to be there…
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Catch a (micro)wave

carbonscape.jpgThere are some amazing people in NZ. Just when I’m tearing (what’s left of) my hair out at the idiocy of some politicians, along comes a news story to gladden the heart of anyone living in the real world. Yesterday, Blenheim-based start-up Carbonscape reported that it has just begun batch production of charcoal in a microwave oven the size of a double garage. Wood waste goes in at one end, the oven heats it up and it turns into charcoal – giving off syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The charcoal can be added to soil (as biochar, aka terra preta), fixing the carbon away from the atmosphere and improving soil fertility, while the syngas can be burned to create energy to drive the process – known as pyrolysis.

Carbonscape call their oven the Black Phantom, Stuff reports:

Continue reading “Catch a (micro)wave”

Smokestack lightning

cotwo.jpeg Nature’s The Great Beyond blog draws my attention to the news that global carbon dioxide emissions are increasing at “an alarming rate” – hitting nearly 10 billion tonnes in 2007. The Global Carbon Project’s new report concludes:

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, and despite efforts to curb emissions in a number of countries which are signatories of the Kyoto Protocol. Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel and land use change reached the mark of 10 billion tones of carbon in 2007. Natural CO2 sinks are growing, but more slowly than atmospheric CO2, which has been growing at 2 ppm per year since 2000. This is 33% faster than during the previous 20 years. All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger climate forcing and sooner than expected.

Emissions are now running above even the most fossil fuel intensive of the IPCC’s scenarios (A1F1), driven by strong growth in China and India. Here’s the press release from the Oak Ridge lab, and there’s good analysis at Climate Progress. A PDF of the full presentation is available here[1.5MB].

More methane news: the Telegraph (UK) reports that a British survey vessel, the James Clark Ross, observed around 250 methane plumes in deep water over a 30 sq mile area west of Svalbard. It’s apparently thought that this system has been active since the end of the last ice age. The Independent also picks up the story, but doesn’t add much more information.

[Update 27/9: Nature provides a round up, apparently intent on debunking “alarmist predictions” of imminent hydrate release (grab it before it disappears behind a paywall), but the interesting bit comes at the end:

Globally, atmospheric methane concentrations increased by 7.5 parts per billion to nearly 1,800 parts per billion during 2007 after almost zero growth since 1999. The upward trend is likely to continue this year, says Ed Dlugokencky, who oversees the methane database run by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. “Our data suggest increased emissions in the Arctic and the tropics,” he says. “Both regions were apparently warmer and wetter than average.”

Not much comfort there… [update: this link to the text may not expire]]

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Mrs O’Leary’s Cow

homer.jpg Did you know that all cows are carbon neutral? That all the fuss about forcing farmers into an emissions trading scheme is stuff and nonsense? You do now, thanks to the sterling efforts of the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian organisation. They issued a press release yesterday, news of which reached me via the Royal Society‘s daily news alert:

News release: Farm lobbies abandon farmers. The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

Ignoring science, eh? I went in search of what they might be on about…

[Warning: do not read while drinking – extreme beverage/screen interface risk]

Continue reading “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow”