in partnership with

Harvey and Hudson, shirtmakers and tie specialists

GoinGreen - Driving Down Pollution

I Love G-Wiz

CoolTribe - Green Social Networking



Shopping Basket:

You currently have 0 item(s)

Total: £0.00

Subscribe to our newsletter
blog

Solar Energy Conversion Process: Light and Heat

The scientific struggle to increase the efficiency in which renewable energy is used and then reused has proven to be a daunting task. Large wind farms and fields of solar panels are commonly used to generate energy through solar radiation. Congruently, investors are having a troublesome time competing with traditional oil and electric suppliers.

latest news
Europeans Aim for `Swift Reaction' on UN CO2 Offsets, EU's Hedegaard Says

Bloomberg, 1 Aug 2010

The European Union regulator wants to offer carbon markets a quick response on restrictions that could be imposed on United Nations offset credits for use in the bloc’s cap-and-trade system, the EU’s climate chief said.
Clean-Coal Group Backs New Carbon Capture And Storage Project

Wall Street Journal, 1 Sep 2010

A group of coal and power companies said Tuesday that it has decided to stick with a government-backed project to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from a coal-fired power plant despite a significant change in plan.
Housebuilders to win reduced carbon target for homes

Guardian, 30 Aug 2010

Government to water down 2016 'zero carbon' target for new homes
EU Carbon Permits Head for Biggest Gain Since April as German Power Rises

Bloomberg, 30 Aug 2010

European Union carbon permits advanced, heading for the biggest monthly gain since April as German power prices increased.
carbon capture

The effort to mitigate global warming requires removing CO2 from the atmosphere. This is the idea of carbon capture.

Our planet has its own ways to capture carbon. The most efficient one is through vegetation. Living plants and trees capture CO2 from the atmosphere in vast amounts and store the carbon in their cells.

Forests are so efficient at capturing carbon that they are referred to as carbon sinks.

Oceans also capture carbon, and all organic matter is made of carbon-based molecules. CO2 enters the food chain through vegetation and as a result all living beings are part of the carbon cycle.

The carbon cycle is the balance of carbon sinks and carbon sources. Living organisms store carbon and dying organisms release it.

The ideal climate change mitigation would be to create an artificial carbon sink that is more efficient than forests. However it is hard to beat Nature.

There are projects to create carbon capture and storage technology, by extracting emissions from coal-fired plants, compressing them and storing them safely. They are still far from being a plausible and cost-effective reality.

Forests are Nature’s own effective mitigator of climate change.

The carbon capture rate changes during the lifetime of a tree. It increases steadily with age, until it reaches a plateau in old life. A tree never stops absorbing carbon while it is alive.

This would be perfect were it not for the fact that trees in fact release carbon when they die and the wood begins to decompose.

A managed forest must anticipate this and replace trees when they are past full maturity.

This way the carbon is safely stored away in the wood.