Coffee: is the black stuff as green as it should be?

From deforestation to fertilizer; our taste for coffee has left some of the world’s most precious eco-systems in a precarious state. George Blacksell looks at how the coffee industry is cleaning up its act. The world’s second most tradable commodity after oil; coffee growing and processing has proven itself to be a lucrative industry. The burgeoning coffee culture that sprang up over the last few decades has led to overwhelming success for handful of coffee franchises and a massive spike in supermarket sales. Of the high street coffee chains, Costa, Starbucks, Cafe Nero and Pret A Manger have cornered the lion’s share of the profits. While no one is denying their right to make a buck, the big question is whether the profits these franchises are making are trickling down to the people actually growing the beans? And how green are they really? Is the high street coffee industry one we should buy into or should we be avoiding it altogether?

MAJOR RIVERS HAVE ENOUGH WATER TO SUSTAIN GROWING POPULATIONS

A new study says the world’s major river systems contain more than enough water to meet globalfood production needs in the 21st century. Following a five-year study of 10 river basins, including the Nile.

Plants and CO2

Plants absorb carbon dioxide and exhale Oxygen. They are a major part of the global cycle. The global uptake of carbon by land plants may be up to 45 per cent more than previously thought. This is the conclusion of an international team of scientists, based on the variability of heavy oxygen atoms in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere driven by the El Niño effect. As the oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide were converted faster than expected during the El Niño years, current estimates for the uptake of carbon by plants are probably too low. These should be corrected upwards, say the researchers in the current issue of the scientific journal NATURE. Instead of 120 petagrams of carbon, the annual global vegetation uptake probably lies between 150 and 175 petagrams of carbon. This value is a kind of gross national product for land plants and indicates how productive the biosphere of the Earth is. The reworking of this so-called global primary productivity would have significant consequences for the coupled carbon cycle-climate model used in climate research to predict future climate change.

New Zealand adjusts its CO2 trading program to address market distortions

New Zealand is looking to exclude the use of U.N. offsets from industrial gas projects in its emissions trading scheme from as soon as 2012, as these offsets threaten to distort the market, the government said on Friday.

Obama administration to push back fuel efficiency standards

The Obama administration will push back the release of the most ambitious proposal ever for automakers to improve fuel efficiency of their passenger cars, sport utility vehicles and pickups.

Why Are Investors Bearish on Clean Energy?

I called my friend, clean energy finance expert Bill Paul for some advice the other day. "I have a client with a breakthrough in battery chemistry, and I’m trying to find them a manufacturing partner in the electric vehicles space. Where do you think I should look?" I asked. By the word where, what I meant was at what companies? But what I got from Bill was this: "My first suggestion is that you forget everyone and everything in the United States." He went on, "There’s no money here. More correctly, there’s plenty of money, but it’s not moving. It’s sitting on the sidelines — two trillion dollars of it. Check out Europe. They have their own issues, of course, but at least they’re making investments, and not just sitting around watching the rest of the world fly past them."

Volunteers Bring Solar Energy to Low-Income Homes

Here’s a feel-good story that I just caught glimpse of while browsing Sierra Club Green Home. GRID alternatives, a California non-profit whose goal is to provide low-income communities with renewable energy, recently installed 13 solar energy systems in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood.
According to the article by Kathleen Haley, the event was one of several planned for this year’s Solarthon, an “annual solar installation block party and fundraiser for GRID Alternatives…[that] brings together hundreds of individual, team, and corporate participants from their communities to install multiple solar energy systems,” according to GRID alternatives’ site. (A video about the 2009 Solarthon is below.) Other 2011 Solarthon events will take place in San Diego, Fresno, Templeton, and Los Angeles.

Waste Water + Bacteria = Clean Energy

For the first time, researchers have sustainably produced hydrogen gas, a potential source of clean energy, using only water and bacteria. The challenge now, scientists say, is to scale up the process to provide large amounts of hydrogen for various purposes, such as fueling vehicles or small generators.