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Jun 30, 2009 | 7
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said today that it will let California set its own tailpipe emissions standards under a fresh interpretation of the Clean Air Act, The Los Angeles Times reports.
“This decision puts the law and science first,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.
The announcement represents a compromise among the auto industry, environmental groups and the Obama administration. As a concession to automakers, the state has promised not to break from the federal standard until 2017. The new national requirement, approved in May, will require all new cars and trucks to get 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.
May 20, 2009 | 18
Capturing the carbon dioxide that wafts up the smokestack after burning coal (or any other fossil fuel) has been identified by everyone from President Obama to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a critical technology to help keep the lights on while combating climate change. And now there has been yet another successful demonstration that the technology to capture that CO2 from flue gas might actually work: chilled ammonia can capture more than 88 percent of the greenhouse gas before it goes up the smokestack.
Alstom Power and We Energies have released preliminary data on their carbon capture pilot project at Pleasant Prairie, Wisc. The pilot plant, set up to siphon the CO2 from a small stream of the total flue gas using chilled ammonia, not only captured most of the CO2, it captured it in a more than 99 percent pure form, according to Robert Hilton, vice president of power technologies and government affairs at Alstom, which is important for any future storage or industrial reuse. "We can [capture] 90 percent [of the CO2] and do it consistently," he notes. "We've done over 90 percent at times."
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The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
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