First we heat up cold water for baths, showers and washing, write Jan Hofman & Laura Piccinini. Then we chuck all that precious heat down the plughole. So how about recycling our waste heat to warm up water on its way to the boiler or hot water tank, cutting bills and emissions? Or on a larger scale, use the sewage from entire communities as a free energy source for heat pumps?
… lost through pipe walls into the surrounding soil. These models work in practice. When we …
With five reactors closed in the last three years, the US nuclear industry is in shutdown mode, writes Linda Pentz Gunter - and that means big spending on decommissioning. But now the nuclear regulator is set to exempt owners from safety and emergency costs at their closed plants - allowing them to walk away from the costs and liabilities, and palm them onto taxpayers.
… currently mandate clearing away surface soil down to three feet. But strontium-90 has … radioactivity has been left behind in soil and water before power companies are …
Many of the substances that make wastewater a pollutant can also be useful as fertilisers for agriculture and in generating gases for small power stations, says report
… GREEN LIVING How to grow a green manure Your soil will love you for it, wildlife thrives in …
Montana legislators have brushed off the attempts of farmers, ranchers and landowners to effect 'zoning' regulations to protect them, their land, their water and their livestock from the toxic impacts of fracking. Now they say: 'See you in Court!'.
… is completed, threatening pollution of soil and groundwater. Numerous chemicals used …
As well as being masters of water engineering, the Romans also engaged in a long distance trade in water across the Mediterranean - embodied in grain, oil, wine, cloth, metals and other goods. They also discovered the food-water-energy nexus - and not in a good way. We need to heed the warnings from Roman history.
… role. Intensive farming is degrading soil, its primary resource base, up to 100 …
Renewable energy is all go in China, as set out in its climate pledge this week, writes John Mathews, with huge growth planned for wind and solar. The one big loser - coal exporters who can expect falling sales volumes in coming years. Wake up Australia!
… to encompass reforestation (which protects soil and inhibits flooding of rivers), clean …
Almudena Serpis reports on the activists taking action against the expansion of coal mining in the beautiful and ecologically important Lacaiana valley
… to reconstruct these mountains.' The soil, which took millions of years to form, is … the machines employed use up 7000 litres of gasoil per day. Nobody from the village drinks …
The earthquake and nuclear meltdown in Japan last year compounded pre-existing issues like falling birth rates, fragmented families and shrinking communities. What does the future hold?
… that engulfed their village tainted the soil with salt water, making growing anything …
In 1980 The Ecologist published an iconic Special Edition' devoted to the multi-use 'wonder crop' hemp. 34 years on, Thomas Prade finds the case for industrial hemp is as strong as ever.
… energy crop. Still, if cultivated on good soil with decent fertilisation, hemp can …
The Drax power station in Yorkshire is the UK's biggest CO2 emitter, burns more wood each year than the entire UK timber harvest, and is a major importer of coal from strife-stricken regions of Colombia, writes Frances Howe. This Thursday campaigners will target the company's AGM to highlight its impacts on forests, biodiversity, climate and communities, in the face of Drax's PR offensive to make biomass appear 'sustainable'.
… a forest does, is more likely to deplete the soil and water and may rely on spraying with …
Its short lifespan and greater potency means tackling methane emissions now could have a dramatic effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reports Tom Levitt
… trees could be funnelling methane out of the soil and into the air, although it remains as …
The new suite of measures proposed by the Government for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an impressive list... but as the information sinks in green groups have begun to find some holes
… Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, said he was pleased to see …
Lithium is a key global resource for the global energy transition thanks to its role in the lightweight, efficient batteries that will power cars and balance power grids, writes Rafael Sagárnaga López. But the booming demand threatens to contaminate one of the world's great wonders, the Salar de Uyuni, 12,000 feet high in the Bolivia's Andes, which holds 70% of the world's lithium reserves.
… pollution, including the calcination of soil which would put the Salar's flora and …
After a massive oil find in Syria's Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967, Israel is asking President Obama to recognise its annexation of the territory, writes Jonathan Cook. To consolidate its hold, plans are afoot to quadruple Israeli settler numbers to 100,000.
… third of Israel's needs. The fertile volcanic soil allows Israel to cultivate vineyards and …
Just imagine: gas for your cooking and heating made by composting home-grown British grass, writes Almuth Ernsting. What's not to like? Well, it would need almost all the UK's grassland to match our gas demand, leaving cows and sheep to starve or forcing them into sheds to eat foreign-grown feeds. And methane leakage could easily wipe out any climate benefit.
… though not eliminating such emissions from soils. Furthermore, the proposed biomethane …
With surging demand for power and blackouts common across the continent, Africa is looking to solar, wind and geothermal technologies to meet its energy needs
… largest permanent desert lake. The volcanic soil is scoured by hot winds that blow …
Evolutionary biologist Timothy Mousseau and his colleagues have published 90 studies that prove beyond all doubt the deleterious genetic and developmental effects on wildlife of exposure to radiation from both the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters, writes Linda Pentz Gunter. But all that peer-reviewed science has done little to dampen the 'official' perception of Chernobyl's silent forests as a thriving nature reserve.
… a wider area, which scientists traced from soil levels of cesium 137, a long-lived …