Tag Archives: greenenergy

Biofuel expansion would send cattle into the rain forest

By anthony | Published: February 9, 2010
Biofuel production in the US has met with fairly mixed success, as the cost and fossil fuel use of corn-based ethanol has severely cut into the benefits provided by avoiding the use of fossil fuels. It's been a somewhat different story in Brazil, which has embraced ethanol derived from sugarcane and seen more promising results. The government has set aggressive targets for both ethanol and biodiesel production, but a study that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science later this week urges caution: unless the goals are met through an integrated agricultural strategy, they'll drive deforestation that will offset most of the benefits. The study looked at the expansion of the two crops that are expected to drive biofuels growth in Brazil: sugarcane for ethanol, and soy beans for biodiesel.
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From solar energy to hydrogen: there’s no step two

By admin | Published: November 24, 2009
A lot of the high-profile developments in renewable energy have focused on improving the efficiency of technologies that are destined for the industrialized world, which has the infrastructure to support expensive, centralized solutions. Powering the developing world will have a distinct set of problems, as equipment will have to be cheap, rugged, and capable of operating in situations where there may not be an electric grid. Cobalt phosphate catalysts, which form spontaneously and split water (releasing hydrogen) when provided with an electric current, may satisfy many of these requirements, and a paper released by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science described a way to simplify cobalt-based systems even further. We've been tracking the cobalt catalysts since they first first appeared in the scientific literature.
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