Word: biomass
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That soupy brown air is the result of so-called black carbon expelled into the atmosphere in and around the Indian capital, from the burning of biomass for cookstoves and of black coal for electricity, and the incomplete combustion in the old diesel engines that propel most of the cars and trucks in the city. Breathing here isn't all that good for you - there's a reason the city is home to the "Delhi cough" - and now scientists are discovering that the sooty air isn't good for the climate either. According to some estimates, black carbon...
...this has particular importance for developing Asian countries, especially India, where a mix of development means that biomass-burning and diesel combustion remains prominent. (In developed countries like the U.S., there's much less burning of biomass and any diesel combustion tends to be much cleaner, as the clearing skies over major U.S. cities demonstrate.) Though India is responsible for less than 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Ramanathan it is responsible for about 6% of global black-carbon emissions, give or take a significant margin of error. India and other developing countries rightly argue that rich nations...
...energy cycle has proven very difficult - especially in poorer developing nations - black-carbon emissions should be easier to curb. Reducing deforestation will help - the burning of tropical rain forests is a big contributor to the black-carbon load. Next, diesel filters in cars can be upgraded, and biomass-burning stoves can be exchanged for technology that uses solar power or natural gas. These changes will cost money, but they should be cheaper than decarbonization. And cutting back on black carbon will also pay immediate health dividends, with less air pollution and fewer deaths from respiratory diseases. We might even...
...quickly jolted by a fresh aroma reminiscent of a walk-in cedar closet. It is indeed red cedar: tons of chips discarded by a timber mill and trucked in to fuel the University of Idaho's steam plant in the town of Moscow (population roughly 23,000). Thermal biomass provides over 80% of heat and hot water to the campus of nearly 11,000 students. Wood-fueled steam also powers five of the eight chiller units that cool the campus buildings during warm weather. Plant manager Mike Lyngholm says the process significantly reduces the school's net carbon emissions...
...month to $1,100. Townsend, Mont., schools converted their boilers from propane and oil to wood pellets. The new system is expected to pay for itself in fuel savings, plus selling CO2 emission offsets through the Climate Trust. Meanwhile, Vermont's Middlebury College is completing a central thermal biomass system that will provide heating and cooling, saving $2 million a year on fuel-oil bills, plus generating one-fifth of campus electrical-power needs. Middlebury is planting fast-growing willow shrubs on 10 acres, in the hopes that it will provide as much as half the woody fuels that...