24 million American children ride school buses daily. On average, these students spend an hour and a half each day in a school bus. School buses drive more than 4 billion miles each year. School buses are the safest way for children to get to school. However, pollution from older diesel vehicles have health implications for everyone, especially children. Clean School Bus USA (EPA based) brings together partners from business, education, transportation, and public-health organizations to work toward the goals of reducing the potential health impact on children. School districts, with the help of federal grants (and state grants in some cases) have been working to replace the oldest, most polluting buses, and to upgrade others with better pollution control equipment. (The Diesel Reduction Act was reauthorized for five years in December 2010, but it's unclear how much money Congress will appropriate to continue the program.) The way drivers operate the buses can also have a big impact on the air quality for kids.
School buses are a necessary evil despite some issues such as diesel pollution fumes.
Unnecessary school bus idling pollutes the air, wastes fuel, and causes excess engine wear. Fortunately, it's easy to implement practices that reduce school bus idling. This also applies to all of those people who drive their kids to school and let their cars idle in lines.
Idling school buses can pollute air in and around the bus. Exhaust from buses can also enter school buildings through air intakes, doors, and open windows. Diesel bus exhaust from excessive idling can be a health concern.
Idling buses waste fuel and money. When idling, a typical school bus engine burns approximately half a gallon of fuel per hour. School districts that eliminate unnecessary idling can save significant dollars in fuel costs each year.
Any bus built before 1998 should be considered a prime candidate for replacement because older vehicles are designed with higher air emission standards in mind. The ideal current goal is to have a fleet of buses built since 2007, when a new law went into effect requiring closed crankcases and advanced emissions controls to limit the emissions of soot and other harmful pollutants. On older buses, having drivers close the crankcase reduces pollution inside buses significantly.
Despite the air quality problems that persist in older buses, the bus is still the most efficient and least-polluting way to get most kids to school as well as the safest. If everybody drove to school there would be fifty vehicles for every bus spewing fumes and blocking traffic flow.
Prince Philip School in Saskatoon is on a roll. One of its Grade 8 students has been chosen as first-place Saskatchewan winner in the 2011 Energy and the Environment Art Contest. In 2010, both first-and second-place winners from Saskatchewan attended Grade 8 at Prince Philip.
The contest is produced by Natural Resources Canada and co-ordinated in the province by the Ministry of Energy and Resources. Students compete from all provinces and territories. This year 534 entries were received from Saskatchewan schools.
Ariana Faul's award-winning design will be featured in an upcoming Energy and the Environment Poster being published by Natural Resources Canada and distributed to teachers across Canada.
Ariana's work will also be featured in the Youth Art Gallery on the Climate Change Saskatchewan website located at www.climatechangesask.ca and in the Kid's Club Art Gallery on the Natural Resources Canada website at www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/calendarclub.
Zachary Rohel, a Grade 8 student from Annaheim School, was selected as second-place Saskatchewan winner. His artwork, titled Green Light is also available for viewing on the Climate Change Saskatchewan website.
"Students have such passion and insight into how they want to see the world they will inherit," Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd said. "The contributions of the students of today will have an impact on our country's environmental and conservation policies of the future."
Both students will receive their awards and prize packages, which include laminated copies of their winning artwork, at presentations in their respective schools. A $300 donation was also made to the first-place winner's school resource centre.
The Energy and the Environment Art Contest has been running since 1991, encouraging elementary school students to depict wise energy use and conservation through artwork.
Nomination Deadline: Monday August 15th, 2011 at 4:00pm ET
The Catalyst Awards recognize people who are “catalysts” to change in their own communities by empowering people to believe that simple actions matter and smart choices can protect the environment.
This year’s event and award ceremony will be held during the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference.
Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2011 in Washington, DC
Time: 7:30 to 9:30 pm
Award Categories
Corporate Catalyst: Awarded to a company or organization that has demonstrated community leadership and environmental stewardship that resonates with the precepts of One Change – to be positive, action-oriented, non-political, inclusive, and pragmatic in its efforts to promote environmental responsibility through the adoption and promotion of simple actions.
Political Catalyst: Awarded to an individual in public office who has demonstrated a steadfast pledge in his/her community to promote conservation and environmental responsibility by empowering people to believe that simple actions and smart choices can make a difference.
NGO Catalyst: Awarded to an NGO organization that has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to furthering the goals of environmental efficiency through simple actions, resulting in increased community engagement, involvement, and participation in a dramatic way.
Community Catalyst: Awarded to an individual who has demonstrated an outstanding contribution of time, effort, and commitment in their support of One Change and the principles of simple actions matter.
To submit a Catalyst Award nomination please send your submission to CatalystAwards@onechange.org or fax to 613-232-9504 or by mail to One Change, 68 Chamberlain Ave, Suite 200, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 1V9.
World carbon dioxide emissions are one way of measuring a country's economic growth too.
And the latest figures - published by the respected Energy Information Administration - show CO2 emissions from energy consumption - the vast majority of Carbon Dioxide produced.
The map, above (you can get it as a PDF file here) is produced by Guardian graphic artists Mark McCormick and Paul Scruton. It shows a world where established economies have large - but declining - carbon emissions. While the new economic giants are growing rapidly. This newly-released data is from 2009 - the latest available.
On pure emissions alone, the key points are:
• China emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together - up by 171% since the year 2000
• The US has had declining CO2 for two years running, the last time the US had declining CO2 for 3 years running was in the 1980s
• The UK is down one place to tenth on the list, 8% on the year. The country is now behind Iran, South Korea, Japan and Germany
• India is now the world's third biggest emitter of CO2 - pushing Russia into fourth place
• The biggest decrease from 2008-2009 is Ukraine - down 28%. The biggest increase is the Cook Islands - up 66.7%
But that is only one way to look at the data - and it doesn't take account of how many people live in each country. If you look at per capita emissions, a different picture emerges where:
• Some of the world's smallest countries and islands emit the most per person - the highest being Gibraltar with 152 tonnes per person
• The US is still number one in terms of per capita emissions among the big economies - with 18 tonnes emitted per person
• China, by contrast, emits under six tonnes per person, India only 1.38
• For comparison, the whole world emits 4.49 tonnes per person
There are other sources of emissions data too, if you want to compare - albeit not as up-to-date:
But what can we say about this data and how close we are to the collective targets in the Kyoto agreement?
The Kyoto protocol target emission does not include, but this EIA data does. You can't tell this from the notes on the data, but the EIA confirmed to us this was the case.
We can determine what the so called 'bunker fuels' are from the data here.
But only looking at carbon dioxide emissions doesn't give us the total for all greenhouse gases.
So we'll have to wait until the UNFCCC publishes the results of global greenhouse gasses collated data before we can draw any firm conclusions about meeting the Kyoto agreements.
SaskEnergy pipeline subsidiary TransGas, together with partner companies Found Energy and Innovative Steam Technologies (IST) will use an innovative technology designed to capture the waste heat of compressor station engines and convert it to useable electricity. If successful, the corporation could be producing more renewable electricity than it consumes by 2015, thanks to this new green technology. The project will also help develop Waste Heat Recovery technology for applications with other energy industry markets in Western Canada.
TransGas uses compressors to move natural gas through its 14,000 kilometres of high pressure transmission pipeline across Saskatchewan, as well as to inject gas into its 27 underground storage caverns and two storage fields.
“SaskEnergy and TransGas have set a goal to become net zero in electricity consumption by 2015 and Waste Heat Recovery will be one of the key factors in pursuing this goal,” said Minister Responsible for SaskEnergy Dustin Duncan. “Recovering waste heat from compressor engines will reduce the corporation?s carbon footprint and our province?s reliance on traditional, electrical generation sources. Through this project, SaskEnergy is supporting Saskatchewan?s „Go Green? initiative by investing in an environmental solution to an every day business process.”
The $5.7M Waste Heat Recovery project at TransGas? Rosetown and Coleville Compressor Stations will capture heat normally vented to the atmosphere through the compressor engines? exhaust, and converts it to electricity utilizing a process called the Organic Rankine Cycle. The electricity will then be sold back to the SaskPower grid.
Construction is currently underway at Rosetown Compressor Station, with commissioning, testing, and start-up planned for March 2011, with the Coleville project soon to follow. The Coleville Waste Heat Recovery project will be the first of its kind in North America to utilize new technology for small compressor engines, which is why SaskEnergy and Found Energy are optimistic about its future use in the energy industry. Similar projects are in the planning stages for some of TransGas? other compressor facilities.
"Found Energy brings together the best minds and technology available and with our collective in-house resources, are well positioned to be a single-source provider that can handle jobs from start to finish," says Bob Dautovich, President, IST. "We have the unique ability to partner with forward-thinking industry leaders to develop such clean energy facilities. We are extremely pleased to have this first order from TransGas and look forward to being their partner in improving their energy efficiency and helping to reduce their carbon footprint.”
The Rosetown Waste Heat Recovery unit is expected to produce roughly seven million kWh per year – enough to power nearly 800 Saskatchewan homes. This is equivalent to approximately 25 per cent of SaskEnergy and TransGas? total annual electrical consumption. The Rosetown project will offset approximately 5,000 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) per year – comparable to that which would be achieved by planting approximately 78 square kilometres of carbon absorbing forest.
