Daily Sustainability News Roundup: March 10, 2010
Fleishman-Hillard’s Sustainability blog publishes a daily roundup of compelling stories from traditional media and blogs that straddle the nexus of sustainability, energy policy, and corporate social responsibility. Inclusion of stories does not translate into endorsement of any particular opinion or technology over another.
Drought Has Venezuela Looking at Alternatives to Hydropower (via New York Times’ Green Inc.)
A severe and prolonged drought in Venezuela has the country considering ways to diversify its energy portfolio through wind and nuclear power. Hydropower currently produces up to two-thirds of the total national energy total.
Kerry Says ‘Great Deal’ of Consensus Reached on Climate Policy (via Bloomberg)
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) says a bipartisan group of lawmakers reached consensus at a White House meeting on energy policy, and expects to introduce climate legislation into the U.S. Senate soon.
Xtreme Power: A Super-Battery For Hawaiian Wind Farms (via Earth2Tech)
A clean tech startup has announced a new battery energy storage project to back up a 30-megawatt wind farm on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
IMF Proposes Global Fund to Ease Climate Adaption (via The Atlantic)
The International Monetary Fund is proposing a global climate change adaption fund as insurance for countries facing the worst consequences of global warming’s effects.
EPA Piecing Together Regulatory Framework for Greenhouse Gas Rules (via New York Times)
The U.S. EPA has submitted the first portion of its rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions to the White House, signaling that the Obama administration is on schedule to regulate emissions through regulation in the absence of federal legislation.
China, India give nod to Copenhagen climate change accord (via Washington Post and Associated Press)
China and India have given qualified approval to the Copenhagen climate accord calling for voluntary limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Electrified roads could power vehicles, say researchers (via BusinessGreen)
South Korean researchers have developed a way to charge electric vehicles while they are traveling by embedding magnetic compounds in the road.
Businesses offer best path to money in smart grid (via CNET’s Green Tech)
Commercial and industrial business power customers who can save large amounts of money may be the best prospects for smart grid and smart metering funding, instead of consumers who may be unwilling to change their energy consumption.
On rooftops worldwide, a solar water heating revolution (via Grist)
Rooftop solar thermal water heaters are spreading fast across the globe as a way to convert sunlight into heat to warm water and homes.
EPA: U.S. saw record decline in greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 (via Los Angeles Times’ Greenspace)
High gasoline prices, a slow economy, and a cool summer caused U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to decrease nearly 3 percent in 2008 from 2007 levels, according to the U.S. EPA.
Green stimulus spending shifts forward. Probably. (via Financial Times’ Energy Source)
Financial analysts HSBC has revised downward its estimate of the money spent in 2009 by governments on green stimulus packages from $94 billion to $82 billion, citing difficulty in actually spending the money.
Australia’s Renewable Energy Future Report Released (via The Energy Collective)
The Australian Academy of Science has released an outlook report on the country’s renewable energy future, which urges adaption of low-carbon generation technology.
Lesson’s From Spain’s Solar Bubble (via The New Republic’s The Vine)
The boom, bust, and recovery of Spain’s solar industry may hold lessons for America’s nascent solar industry.
Scientists Develop New Plastics That Can Be Recycled Continuously (via Yale Environment’s e360 digest)
Researchers at IBM and Stanford University have discovered a cheap organic catalyst that can build up and break down plastics over and over again. By comparison, the metal catalysts currently used contaminate and degrade polymers over time, eventually making them unrecyclable.
U.S. Sitting on Mother Lode of Rare Tech-Crucial Minerals (via TechNews Daily)
The U.S. holds largely untapped reserves of rare earth minerals found in green technologies, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Until now, China has supplied most of these materials, and concern about material availability threatened to limit new technological innovations.
It appears that world leaders have reached an 
Another busy week has passed us by. FHers in the United States are preparing for next week’s Thanksgiving festivities, while also gearing up with the world for the home stretch to
There is significant hope that the COP15 Conference in Copenhagen this December will put an end to the recent two-year international negotiation process over the commitment of industrialized and developing nations to lower carbon emissions. The goal of COP15 is to establish a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.