Enviro roundup – Europe goes black while Boeing and Airbus go green

Europe looks to burn more coal

Italy’s top electric producer is switching from oil to coal at a major electric plant. The country as a whole expects to move from 14 to 33 percent on coal-fired electricity in just five years. And it won’t be alone in that time frame:

European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years.

European countries, just like our Preznit, are touting “clean coal.” But really, in terms of global warming, it’s just “mildly less dirty coal.”

“Building new coal-fired power plants is ill conceived,” said James E. Hansen, a leading climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Given our knowledge about what needs to be done to stabilize climate, this plan is like barging into a war without having a plan for how it should be conducted, even though information is available. We need a moratorium on coal now, with phase-out of existing plants over the next two decades.”

Since most western European countries, with the highly visible exception of France, go nuclear about the idea of nuclear power, and renewables can’t address all the demand, it seems like it’s longer-lasting — and cheaper — but dirtier coal vs. oil or natural gas.

The European Union has pledged to build 12 carbon-capture coal plants, but given that infeasibilities, and not just energy-industry issues, led Bush to scrub the one pilot plant here, I seriously doubt that the EU will deliver the goods. The Enel plant referenced above says it will “experiment” with carbon capture by 2015, but that’s a ways off.

Give the plant credit for other environmental cred, though:

On many other fronts, the new Enel plant is a model of efficiency and recycling. The nitrous oxide is chemically altered to generate ammonia, which is then sold. The resulting coal ash and gypsum are sold to the cement industry.

An on-site desalination plant means that the operation generates its own water for cooling. Even the heated water that comes out of the plant is not wasted: it heats a fish farm, one of Italy’s largest.

Meanwhile, it appears Enel has nothing to learn from U.S. Big Coal:

(An environmental group) says that Enel has won approval for a dangerous new coal plant by buying machines for a local hospital and by carrying out a public relations campaign. Enel advertisements for the project show a young girl erasing a plant’s smokestack.

Pretty slick.

Boeing, Airbus look to cooperate

The world’s top two aircraft builders signed a cooperation deal to reduce air travel’s environmental impact.

And, by working for global interoperability in air traffic management, it may just declutter the runways at London Heathrow, JFK, LAX, etc. Beyond that, the two companies are looking at other areas of environmental cooperation.