Although it is significant that many of the above four imperatives are qualitative, not quantitative, such new efforts have begun to add an elevated level of urgency to corporate environmental strategy. Whereas the Bhopal and Valdez tragedies may have precipitated the birth of Corporate Environmental Strategy, global environmental concerns, such as water shortages in China, the energy crisis and electricity grid problems in the northeastern United States, and especially the complexities surrounding the economic impacts and costs of climate change, have begun to add a new turn-of the-century urgency to the debates over Corporate Environmental Strategy. (more…)
Corporate environmental strategy (CES) involves the tools, management programs, processes, and product development choices that all ...
In the pursuit of superior cars, electronic products, and computing, several leading multinational corporations began in the last q ...
There are several options that, ultimately, must be integrated when attempting to realize a change in corporate culture: the legal ...
In this new century, there is considerable pressure on the top six automakers to reduce their environmental and ecological footprin ...
As energy prices increase, industries are more and more aware that energy is an expensive commodity that has to be used effic ...
Earth’s climate is a complex system of interacting natural components. These components include the atmosphere, the ocean, and the continental ice sheets. Living things on earth—or, the biosphere—also constitute an important component of the climate trends system.
Numerous factors influence Earth’s climate system, some of them natural. For example, the slow drift of continents that takes place over millions of years, a process known as plate tectonics, influences the composition of the atmosphere through its impact on volcanic activity and surface erosion. (more…)
Scientists study Earth’s climate not just from observation but also from a theoretical perspective. Modern-day climate models succe ...
Since preindustrial times, ambient concentrations of the greenhouse gases have exhibited substantial increases, inter alia CO2 ...
Still hotly debated by some, human-induced global warming is now accepted in the scientific community. Earth’s average yearly tempe ...
Options for dealing with the threats of climate change include both adaptation to inevitable changes and mitigation, or lessening, ...
Since the early 1960s, climate change and air quality have become major and often controversial issues in many countries and am ...
Electric utility deregulation offers the great promise of market forces leading to lower electric rates, lower air pollution environment, greater energy (and economic) efficiency, and perhaps greater use of renewable energy sources. Ideally, deregulation involves the restructuring of a previously monopolized or nationalized electric utility into separate generation, transmission, distribution, and marketing companies, and allowing wholesale and retail choice of generation company or power marketer. Deregulation has occurred to varying degrees since 1989 in the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, and about 20 states in the United States. There have been promising results in a few countries and in some U.S. states in some respects, especially lower rates and lower air pollution problems. In most cases, competitive markets have yet to be realized and lower rates can be attributed to other causes, such as previously planned amortization or retirement of expensive power plants, unexpected surplus in natural gas, rate caps, etc. In addition, deregulation has had only a slight beneficial effect on the use of renewable electricity sources. The promise of electric utility deregulation is thus unfulfilled and deserves further study.
Geopolitical considerations have played a major role in many renewable energy policy decisions, e.g., in domestic debates over gasoline taxes, pipeline construction, radioactive waste disposal, and acid rain control legislation in the United States, and in petroleumrelated violence in Nigeria. The most prominent role for geopolitics in energy policy has probably involved international discussions on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and in oil markets. In the cases of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, nations carefully considered their national economic interests, domestic politics, and international trade during the negotiations. European countries, with the lowest rates of population and economic growth along with strong domestic environmental lobbies, have pursued a greater rate of greenhouse gas reduction.
The United States, in contrast, has been stubbornly cautious and backed out of the treaty in 2001 (arguing it is not in its economic best interests), and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East have been least supportive of any emissions controls. In the case of oil markets, with the United States now dependent on imports for over half its supply, energy policy and trade strategy have played major roles in the pursuit of new oil discoveries in Alaska and in warfare in Kuwait, Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan.
Although technology change (usually involving an improvement in energy efficiency) is not inherently a geographic process, it does ...
Climate change caused by the enhanced greenhouse effect is one of the most significant global environmental issues. Increased emiss ...
For years it was out of desperation that observers have advised and viewed of American energy policy and geopolitical risks regardi ...
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been ...
The leading automotive brands are being focused to produce electric vehicles because they believe they represent a harmony to the e ...
Scientists study Earth’s climate not just from observation but also from a theoretical perspective. Modern-day climate models successfully reproduce the key features of Earth’s climate, including the variations in wind patterns around the globe, the major ocean current systems such as the Gulf Stream, and the seasonal changes in temperature and rainfall associated with Earth’s annual revolution around the sun. The models also reproduce some of the more complex natural oscillations of the climate system. Just as the atmosphere displays random day-to-day variability that we term “weather,” the climate system produces its own random variations, on timescales of years. (more…)
Earth’s climate is a complex system of interacting natural components. These components include the atmosphere, the ocean, and the ...
Still hotly debated by some, human-induced global warming is now accepted in the scientific community. Earth’s average yearly tempe ...
Options for dealing with the threats of climate change include both adaptation to inevitable changes and mitigation, or lessening, ...
Although some scientists and critics still dispute that human caused greenhouse gases are causing climate change, the majority of s ...
Since preindustrial times, ambient concentrations of the greenhouse gases have exhibited substantial increases, inter alia CO2 ...
air pollution problems created by coal combustion. Meanwhile, coal-fired power plants and industrial boilers spewed out tons of gaseous and particulate pollutants into the atmo- sphere. During combustion, the small amounts of sulfur and nitrogen in coal combine with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide (SO2), sulfur trioxide (SO3), and the oxides of nitrogen (NOx). (more…)
Coal is still used to a small extent for home heating and cooking. In the homes of more affluent nations, coal is used for recreati ...
A combination of legislation and technology has helped clean up many of the world’s coal-burning plants. Both developed and develop ...
Almost all fossil fuels use is by burning them to create energy. Burning process then produces waste products due to impurities in ...
Coal use today is no longer evocative of dirty power plants with polluting black smoke billowing from their smokestacks. Many o ...
Smoke from biomass and coal combustion contains a large number of pollutants with known health hazards, including particulate matte ...
Addressing global warming, however, is a highly complex and daunting endeavor. Many climate experts have urged the world to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere around 450 to 550 parts per million (ppm)—that is, no more than 450 to 550 units of greenhouse gases for every million units of air in the earth’s atmosphere. This approach, experts say, could keep average global temperatures at no more than 3.6° Fahrenheit (2° Celsius) above preindustrial levels, which could avoid some of the worst, irreversible consequences of climate change. (more…)
Although some scientists and critics still dispute that human caused greenhouse gases are causing climate change, the majority of s ...
Climate change caused by the enhanced greenhouse effect is one of the most significant global environmental issues. Increased emiss ...
Options for dealing with the threats of climate change include both adaptation to inevitable changes and mitigation, or lessening, ...
Scientists study Earth’s climate not just from observation but also from a theoretical perspective. Modern-day climate models succe ...
Earth’s climate is a complex system of interacting natural components. These components include the atmosphere, the ocean, and the ...
We have seen that energy is basic for life and activities in nature and society. Energy is a measure of value in physical terms. However, the more complex a system or a process becomes, the less can be said by physics. Even the term ‘‘complexity’’ is problematic. There are several definitions of complexity as a quantitative concept in information theory. (more…)
Statistics on national production levels and indicators of environmental pressure have been collected during the past few decad ...
Cost–benefit analysis (CBA), also known as benefit–cost analysis, is rooted in applied welfare economics. It is a way of organizing ...
Although some scientists and critics still dispute that human caused greenhouse gases are causing climate change, the majority of s ...
Energy efficiency is defined here to mean energy services provided per unit of energy input (for example, gallons of water hea ...
The first step in categorizing potential benefits and costs is determining the relevant scope of the analysis. We have concluded th ...
Canary wasted much of the wind power produced with wind farms, the current and anticipated, until they are built pumping stations capable of almacenarla. Not be at least until 2015. (more…)
In 2001, there were 14,000 small wind turbines for home/domestic use in the United States. The market potential for national an ...
The wind has covered every Sunday morning more than 50 percent of electricity & energy demand. It has also achieved the record high ...
The wind power potentially could produce 40 times more electricity than worldwide energy consumption annually, according to res ...
Designers in China have launched the first wind turbine levitating in the world of permanent magnetic levitation (Maglev) in the Wi ...
Renewable energy! Renewable energy comes in many forms for many different applications. There is renewable energy for homes for ins ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterprises, and electric power generators. Only a portion of total energy demand is sensitive to temperature changes. (more…)
Here, the sensitivity of energy demand to climate is measured two ways. The first method uses elasticities that provide simple summ ...
To determine the effects of past climate trends on global energy consumption, the econometric equations providing the degree day el ...
Establishing the impact of climate change on energy demand requires a measure of heating and cooling requirements. In the United St ...
Although the focus of many policy studies of climate change is on establishing the causal links between anthropogenic systems, emis ...
Climatologists generally agree that there is accumulating evidence that a warming trend has been occurring since the mid-1960s. The ...
In Bonn met world leaders at the UN Conference on Biodiversity. As we here at The Green Blog world’s biodiversity is seriously threatened due to human action, and that is why the Alliance for the Convention on Biological Diversity called for a total ban on crops for production of biofuels. (more…)
We had expressed our disagreement with Biofuels and tell them also that the European Union also wants to distance themselves from t ...
I just read a very good news via Reuters. And is that the EU has decided to distance themselves from biofuels usage. As we here ...
A vece the attempt to find alternatives to fossil fuels leads to something worse, such as biofuels or agrofuels, considering the dr ...
Biofuels are made from living matter, plant or animal, and are strongly favored by agricultural interests because of the large ...
As energy prices increase, industries are more and more aware that energy is an expensive commodity that has to be used effic ...