carbon dioxide

The Health Care Industry Has a Big, Fat Carbon Footprint

BY Ariel SchwartzWed Nov 11, 2009 at 5:27 PM

The U.S health-care debate may be centered around money, but researchers at the University of Chicago recently published a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association looking at a different kind of cost: the ...READ»

C-FACT | Comment

Autodesk Offers Free Carbon Management Tool for Businesses

BY Ariel SchwartzMon Nov 9, 2009 at 9:42 AM

Autodesk, a popular architecture design software company known for its AutoCAD software, is no stranger to green building techniques. But its new methodology for tracking corporate carbon emissions, dubbed C-FACT (Corporate Finance ...READ»

OLYMPICS | 2 comments

2010 Olympics to Offset All CO2 Emissions

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Nov 3, 2009 at 3:19 PM

The former candidate cities for the 2016 Olympic games may have fought over green credentials, but Vancouver isn't doing too bad itself for next year's games. The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) plans to offset all emissions ...READ»

INFO GRAPHIC | Comment

Infographic of the Day: The G-20 Carbon Calculator

BY Cliff KuangTue Nov 3, 2009 at 1:30 PM

Tracking the carbon emissions, among G-20 countriesREAD»

CARS | Comment

Toyota Creates Its Own Flower Species to Gobble Harmful Gases

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Oct 27, 2009 at 5:32 PM

The Toyota Prius is both praised by environmentalists for its leadership in the hybrid vehicle space and criticized for its wanton use of rare earth metals. Now Toyota is upping the green stakes with a strange, yet ingenious ...READ»

CO2 | Comment

California Polluters Beware: You Will Be Charged for Emitting CO2

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Oct 13, 2009 at 11:20 AM

Sweeping climate change legislation may have to wait until December's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, but California is getting a head start on cutting down corporate emissions with the first statewide fee for ...READ»

DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING | 5 comments

British Climate Change Supercomputer Is Also a Super Polluter

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Aug 28, 2009 at 12:24 PM

Scientists already know that climate change has an impact on the environment, but what about the supercomputers that are supposed to predict climate change? It turns out the U.K.'s most powerful supercomputer, which also happens to be ...READ»

BIOCHAR | Comment

Biochar 100 Machine Generates Fertilizer, Buries Carbon

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Aug 25, 2009 at 4:55 PM

Ambitious schemes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere abound, but the most practical might just be the simplest. Biochar--a technique that uses charcoal from plant waste to fertilize soil--has been used for centuries. And ...READ»

CARBON LABELING | Comment

Does Carbon Labeling Overwhelm Grocery Shoppers? Tesco Says No

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Aug 25, 2009 at 4:19 PM

Tesco, a popular British supermarket chain, earlier this month started printing milk pint labels with information about the product's carbon footprint. It seems uncontroversial enough--Tesco already puts carbon labels on orange ...READ»

NOVOMER | Comment

Novomer Wants to Turn CO2 into Plastic for Your New Solar Panels

BY Ariel SchwartzMon Aug 17, 2009 at 4:27 PM

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) seems like a great idea in theory--just stuff CO2 billowing out of coal plants underground, where it will be safely tucked away for centuries. But the technology hasn't been proven to work on a large ...READ»

BRIGHTER PLANET | Comment

Brighter Planet Brings the Social Web to Carbon Footprints

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Aug 14, 2009 at 12:53 PM

There are hundreds of carbon footprint calculators available on the Internet, but most of them just ask you to input information about your lifestyle in exchange for a footprint rating. If you're lucky, the calculator might offer tips ...READ»

CLOUD TANKERS | 3 comments

Ships That Spray Clouds Into the Sky to Combat Climate Change

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Aug 7, 2009 at 1:16 PM

Instead fighting climate change with emissions-lowering technologies alone, scientists at the Copenhagen Consensus Center are proposing the use of so-called "cloud ships" to launch clouds into the sky. The 1,900 unmanned ...READ»

CARBON CREDITS | Comment

Wearable Carbon Credit Meter Keeps Track of Your Emissions

BY Ariel SchwartzMon Aug 3, 2009 at 5:29 PM

Most of us have only a vague idea of our daily carbon emissions; we know that riding the train to work is better than driving, but not by how much. Industrial designer Nick Hunter wants to change that with his wearable carbon credit ...READ»

GREENHOUSE GASES | 1 comment

The World's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measured by Google Map Mashup

BY Ariel SchwartzMon Aug 3, 2009 at 2:03 PM

If we are to believe the recent spate of sustainability-themed online map mashups, the best way to make sense of the planet's future is through clickable maps. The most recent entry into the map arena is the greenhouse gas emissions ...READ»

SAMSUNG | 1 comment

Samsung Follows in Wal-Mart's Footsteps With Multibillion Dollar Green Investment

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Jul 21, 2009 at 3:16 PM

Less than a week after Wal-Mart announced plans to build a massive "Sustainability Index" for every product it sells, Samsung has announced its own sustainability plan: a $4.3 billion investment to cut carbon emissions by 50% over ...READ»

REALTIME CARBON | Comment

Realtime Carbon Website Tracks Power Plant Pollution As it Happens

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Jul 17, 2009 at 3:06 PM

It's one thing to watch pollutants billow out from smokestacks, but it's quite another to know exactly how much carbon dioxide is being injected into the atmosphere. Realtime Carbon, a website developed by Demand Logic, ...READ»

HELVETA | 1 comment

The Next Big Green Industry: Barcoding Trees to Save Forests?

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Jul 10, 2009 at 1:23 PM

Keeping track of illegally logged trees is a lot easier when you know how many trees there are. At least that's the hope of Helveta, a British company that hammers plastic barcodes into trees. The company, which is tracking a ...READ»

ALGENOL BIOFUELS | Comment

Dow Chemical, Algenol Biofuels Using Algae to turn CO2 into Ethanol

BY Ariel SchwartzMon Jun 29, 2009 at 2:48 PM

Sometimes, carbon dioxide emissions aren't the enemy. Florida-based startup Algenol Biofuels and Dow Chemical Co. are building a Freeport, Texas algae-based biorefinery pilot plant to turn CO2 into ethanol. The 24 acre plant, ...READ»

GLOBAL RESEARCH TECHNOLOGIES | 1 comment

Synthetic Tree Captures Carbon 1,000 Times Faster Than Real Trees

BY Ariel SchwartzWed Jun 24, 2009 at 8:45 AM

Sure, trees are nice to look at, but they're also carbon-collecting powerhouses. Now Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University, is developing a synthetic tree that can collect carbon approximately 1,000 times ...READ»

CLIMATE CHANGE | 4 comments

Obama Climate Change Report: The Outlook Is Dire, the Time to Innovate Is Now

BY Ariel SchwartzTue Jun 16, 2009 at 2:27 PM

The Obama White House has released its first climate change report, and it doesn't say anything we don't already know. It says it, however, in stronger language than any presidency that came before, with statements like ...READ»

CLEAN COAL | Comment

It's Baaack: DOE's Clean Coal Plant Revived

BY Ariel SchwartzFri Jun 12, 2009 at 4:10 PM

Does clean coal exist? We might soon have the chance to find out now that the U.S. Department of Energy's FutureGen clean coal plant project has been revived. FutureGen's future appeared grim last year when the Bush ...READ»

BIO-REACTION INDUSTRIES | Comment

Bio-Reaction Industries Cleans the Air With Bacteria

BY Ariel SchwartzWed Jun 10, 2009 at 2:20 PM

It sounds like the premise to a science fiction film: Company with strange sounding name (Bio-Reaction Industries ) develops a system to clean the air with bacteria, and turns us all into zombies. But the Oregon-based company's system is very real, and it cleans the air in industrial workplaces with help from microbes that eat carbon-based molecules which do not cause zombie-itis (as far as we know).READ»

VIRGIN GALACTIC | Comment

Virgin Galactic Spaceships to Be Powered by Algae-Based Biofuels?

BY Ariel SchwartzThu May 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM

Earlier this month, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn tried to convince us that space travel will turn us all into environmentalists by showing us our big blue ball from a distance. Now it looks like the space travel arm of ...READ»

CHEVRON | 1 comment

Nuns Pressure Chevron to Track Carbon Emissions

BY Ariel SchwartzWed May 27, 2009 at 4:47 PM

Oil companies aren't usually known for their environmental awareness, but Chevron became the largest company--and the only major U.S. oil company--to track its carbon emissions yesterday. The declaration came partially as a result ...READ»

NASA | 8 comments

NASA Coaxes Biofuel From Bags of Sewage

BY Ariel SchwartzTue May 12, 2009 at 4:53 PM

There are lots of creative ways to produce biofuel from algae, but NASA's takes the cake. The space agency is growing biofuel in plastic bags of sewage floating in the sea. The Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae (OMEGA) ...READ»