The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recognized eight landfill methane capture projects for innovations to reduce their emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas — and in the process recover renewable energy. The Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) gives these awards to acknowledge excellence in innovation, successful project development that achieves both environmental and economic benefits.
Anaerobic Digestion is one of the more promising biological technologies for sustainable waste management and has the potential to turn a large and worsening agro-headache into a growing opportunity for sustainable farming. It can extract useful biogas energy and high quality fertilizer from manure and other problematic agro waste products while also reducing the air and water pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases from a farming operation. Anaerobic Digestion harnesses natural living biological processes to maintain the natural carbon cycle and extract useful energy and fertilizer byproducts from what had been problematic waste streams. It is well suited for many types of farming operations and is an important sustainable farming practice.
UPDATE: Department of Agriculture announced a public/private partnership to help spread the use of anaerobic digester technology in dairy operations with the goal of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.
Last week, Secretary Chu announcen nearly $300 million in Clean Cities grants to support clean fuels, vehicles, and infrastructure development. The projects are designed to create jobs, limit pollution, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
EPA today released a list of the nation’s top green power purchasers. These organizations are all participants in the EPA’s Green Power Partnership. The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to buy green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with purchased electricity use. The Partnership currently has hundreds of Partner organizations voluntarily purchasing billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Partners include a wide variety of leading organizations such as Fortune 500 companies, small and medium sized businesses, local, state, and federal governments, and colleges and universities. The list this year’s top green power purchasers is led by Intel Corporation, PepsiCo, Kohl’s Department Stores, Dell Inc., Whole Foods Market, The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, U.S. Air Force, Cisco Systems, Inc. and the City of Houston.
