[The Vector] Biogas that Doesn’t Compete with Food Crops
Growing crops to create biogas has become a controversial renewable energy source because it creates competition for land for food crops. But there is another major source of biogas that doesn’t compete with food crops. In fact, exploiting it would considerably reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK government has plans to generate hundreds of thousands of megawatt hours of electricity from food waste. Food waste is just as much a problem for the United States. According to a 2004 study by the University of Arizona reducing US food waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25 per cent through reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at UA spent 10 years measuring food loss, and here is what he found: (more…)
As I predicted, last week’s trip back to the East Coast was an exercise in nonstop learning about sustainable products. As I made my way up from North Carolina and Virginia through Pennsylvania and New York, one of the many highlights was my last stop in Syracuse, to meet the people responsible for importing and selling copier paper – by the container-load – made not from trees, but from the biomass that’s left over when sugar cane is processed.
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
I’d be lying if I said I spend more than a few minutes a week with the New York Times, but I do try to keep track of the columnists whose opinions I respect. Last week, next to an op-ed by Timothy Geithner that suggested that we were in the midst of recovery, was what I thought was a much more thoughtful and reasonable presentation by Richard Florida on his piece he called “The Great Reset.”
