Clear the Air eMagazine Nov 14, 2009

Check out the latest eMagazine from Clear the Air, featuring news on green articles from around the world.

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DID YOU KNOW: Coal Plants Do $62 Billion of Damage a Year to the US Environment

Coal Plants Do $62 Billion of Damage a Year to the US Environment

Sustainable House Day

‘Sustainable House Day’ gives Australians the chance to visit a home in their locality that has been designed and built primarily to lesson its impact upon the environment.

As reported in Green Pages, there are approximately 170 houses that will be open to the public, and will display to everyone the opportunities available in incorporating designs that capture renewable energies from sun and water, recycling and installation systems and how energy efficiency can be applied.

Even better, and for the first time, ‘Sustainable House Day’ on Sunday, September 13, will be free.

Established in 2001, the “Day” it is an initiative the Australian and NZ Solar Energy Society (ANZSES).

All you have to do is visit one of the homes listed on the website between 10am and 4pm.

Architects and builders will also be there to provide information and exchange ideas on practical methods to save on energy bills like using thermal mass, glazing and window treatments, water storages, solar and ventilation.

Also sponsored by the Australian Government ‘Green Loans’ program, competitions and parties will be held on the day in different locations.

It is estimated that ten percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from households. Thus, Sustainable House Day provides an amazing opportunity to reduce our household’s impact.

Enjoy!

Simon Turner

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Positive Energy – Compare with your Neighbors & Reduce Household Usage

Positive Energy is a new US-based company that provides a social pressure factor to reduce your household energy usage.

By providing information on your energy bills of what your neighbors are using, you are given a like-for-like comparison to see how much power you are using relative to those households in your immediate area.

This is a clever cocktail of behavioural science, marketing techniques and modern information technology that believes in community’s working together being a better mix for success, than distant governments or utility companies telling you to reduce.

And with the financial incentive being that if you reduce your usage you reduce your bills, there seems plenty of reasons to take part.

Simon Turner

Get Paid for Reducing Your Carbon Footprint.

It’s always nice to come across environmental innovations that can be used worldwide.

The website MyEex provides a monetary incentive for consumers to reduce their carbon emissions.

A simple carbon exchange program, all you have to do is reduce your carbon footprint and subsequently be rewarded with credits that can be converted into pure hard cash. As much of us all may want to improve our footprint, the colour of money is sometimes a bit more powerful than relying on ones conscience.

All you need to do to participate is create a user profile on their site (free, of course), and using data from your last 12 months of energy bills (electricity and heating) the site will calculate your base usage.

From this point, using numerous tips and a variety of information sources (including participating in a very social manner) you seek to reduce your energy bills. Each month you’ll enter your power usage and you’ll subsequently have any reductions certified and awarded with Certified Emissions Reductions (known as CERs) which are tradable on the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).

Working on one CER being equal to one ton of carbon reduced (at a price of between $10 – $25 USD), your earnings will be paid via Pay Pal.

Definitely worth a try!

Simon Turner

Nuclear Power is not the Energy Source for Australia

We have all heard the debate in relation to climate change regarding the use of Nuclear Power as a potential replacement for our coal fueled power stations. Is Nuclear power clean and green? Will nuclear power decrease the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions and thus decrease global warming?

In 2007 around 15% of the world’s electricity came from nuclear power. The United States produces the most nuclear energy in the world with nuclear power providing 19% of its electricity supply. France supplies more than 78% of its electricity through nuclear reactors and the European Union as a whole relies on nuclear power for around 30% of its total electricity needs.

The reality is that enormous amounts of fossil fuel are used to mine, mill and enrich Uranium that is needed to fuel a nuclear power plant as well as construct the enormous concrete reactor. Nuclear reactors have a 30-40 year life cycle and massive amounts of fossil fuel energy are required to complete the dismantling process. There is also enormous fossil fuel energy required to transport and store the nuclear waste which is buried underground.

Scarily radioactive waste like Strontium 90 remains radioactive for 600 years. Plutonium is the most significant element in nuclear waste and is so toxic and carcinogenic that 500 grams of the waste evenly distributed around the globe would be enough to cause cancer for every man, woman and child on the planet and Plutonium waste remains toxic for 500,000 years.

When considering radiation it is easy to look at Dentists when they X-Ray your teeth. The dentist will leave the room because any amount of radiation is dangerous if you are exposed to it often enough. The USA currently has more than 55,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that it has stored with each reactor producing a further 25-30 tons of nuclear waste annually.

Australia currently has no commercially operational or planned nuclear reactors. Our focus should be on the harnessing of solar and wind for our energy production. The Kyoto Protocol requires that we produce 20% of our energy needs through renewable means by 2020.

I would like to see our politicians commit to the British plan of producing enough off shore wind farms to produce all of the energy required to power the entire nation by 2020. If nuclear power is too dangerous for Iran to have we should not be looking to increase its use anywhere in the World.

Michael Marquette on +61 433 170 170

Original article published on the Marquette Turner site