Cement plants emit mercury from the kilns used in the cement manufacturing process. Cement kilns operate at high temperatures, and are, in fact used to destroy many types of toxic substances. The rule, proposed on August 9, 2010 also applies to total hydrocarbons (THC), and particulate matter (PM) from new and existing kilns located at major and area sources, and for hydrochloric acid (HCl) from new and existing kilns located at major sources. The standards for new kilns apply to facilities that commence construction, modification, or reconstruction after May 6, 2009 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued final rules to cut emissions of mercury, particle pollution and other harmful pollutants from Portland cement manufacturing, the third-largest source of mercury air emissions in the United States. EPA calculates that the rules will yield $7 to $19 in public health benefits for every dollar in costs.

If solar electricity or solar water heating isn't your cards right now, there are plenty of other ways to take advantage of the sun’s energy—for little or no money. One of the simplest is hanging your wet duds on a clothesline. It only takes just a couple more minutes of your time... To comment on this article, go to the ENN Community Blog Page: http://blog.enn.com/

There are signs that 2010 could be the coming out party for Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). With the onslaught of large wind and solar deployments that will be added to the grid to meet state renewable portfolio standards requirements, there is a lot of buzz about the need for energy storage systems, particularly bulk energy storage. Bulk systems can store megawatt-scale amounts of energy produced during off peak times. They then discharge that energy during peak times, when prices are higher, and over many hours.

BP finished pumping cement into its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday to seal off the source of the world's worst offshore spill, paving the way to permanently plug the blow-out later this month. The daylong cementing operation followed earlier injections of heavy drilling mud this week that had subdued the upward pressure of oil and gas inside the deep-sea Macondo well. The crippled wellhead was provisionally capped in mid-July. "This is not the end, but it will virtually assure us that no oil will be leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the U.S. oil spill response operation, said at a briefing in Washington. "Monitoring of the well is under way in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure," BP said in a statement announcing completion of the cementing work.

Small units that purify household sewage could provide a source of electricity for urban and remote communities in the developing world, according to researchers. The units would be populated with Shewanella oneidensis, one of several types of bacteria that can break down organic matter in sewage, producing electrons and protons. If the sewage is placed between electrodes with the bacteria present, this process can be harnessed to generate an electrical current.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a major report by the federal government addresses the fate of the oil released while the well was gushing, and what is likely to happen to the remaining oil in the ocean. The report was prepared by a team of federal agencies and scientists from NOAA, USGS, and NIST, and as well as independent scientists from universities, Environment Canada, Exxon Mobil, and other companies. The study concludes that the vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the robust federal response efforts. A third (33 percent) of the total amount of oil released in the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill was captured or mitigated by the Unified Command recovery operations, including burning, skimming, chemical dispersion and direct recovery from the wellhead, according to a federal science report released today. An additional 25 percent of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved, and 16 percent was dispersed naturally into microscopic droplets. The residual amount, just over one quarter (26 percent), is either on or just below the surface as residue and weathered tarballs, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments. Dispersed and residual oil remain in the system until they degrade through a number of natural processes.

Two years ago, the British government was still confident that oil reserves were abundant enough to meet rising demand until at least 2030. However, ever since numerous academic studies and industry reports have demonstrated that sometime within this decade global oil production will start to decline. In short, we are about to reach Peak Oil, and we are completely unprepared. Brace for impact.

Solar power is the generation of electricity from sunlight. This can be direct as with photovoltaics, or indirect as with concentrating the sun's rays to boil water which is then used to provide power. Solar energy can be obtained in a variety of different ways. Passive solar occurs when you build your house in a manner that takes advantage of the low angle winter sun and/or when the mass of your house is used to absorb the sun’s heat in winter. In addition, passive solar also refers to keeping your house cooler in the winter months by making adjustments that include placing trees and awnings along the south side of a house.

This year's low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever, about the size of Massachusetts, and overlaps areas hit by oil from BP's broken Macondo well, Louisiana scientists report. The area of hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen, covered 7,722 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) of the bottom of the Gulf and extended far into Texas waters, researchers from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium said in a statement late on Sunday. "This is the largest such area off the upper Texas coast that we have found since we began this work in 1985," said Nancy Rabalais, the consortium's executive director. "The total area probably would have been the largest if we had had enough time to completely map the western part (of the Gulf)."

Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable as opposed to fossil fuels for example which once gone are gone. In 2008, about 19% of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.2% from hydroelectricity. The EPA has just named the 50 green power partners (individual purchasing sources or companies) using the most renewable electricity. The Green Power Partnership’s top purchasers use more than 12 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the electricity use of more than 1 million average American homes. Green Power users pollute less and do not use up non-renewable sources.

ENN affiliate Izzitgreen has selected these offerings specially for ENN readers. Izzitgreen is a blog that helps you stay informed about the latest, coolest, most innovative green products available. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of these items through ENN will go to "e"inc. It's that time of year when students of all ages head back to the classroom. To help students do everything from staying organized to getting their lunches, books, and other supplies to their temples of learning in an eco-sustainable way, our partner IzzitGreen has found a couple of cool, environmentally friendly products to chose from this fall. Ecozoo Organic Backpack Designed for kids heading off to school for the first time, the versatile Ecozoo Organic Backpack is a neat functional backpack disguised as an adorable toy. It will easily hold any preschool item and do so in a backpack that has an adorable eco-friendly animal design. Made with organic cotton canvas the Ecozoo Organic Backpack is durable, machine washable, and extremely lightweight. The dyes used are non-toxic; the wood accents are sustainable; and any plastic contained has been recycled. Pick between an Elephant, Panda, Pig, or Puppy. Click on http://izzitgreen.com/ecozoo-organic-backpack.html to see a further description.

Artificial light has, throughout history, been a powerful force contributing to the quality and productivity of human life. It is so significant to human life that society spends an enormous amount of energy to produce it. Currently, there is new artificial lighting emerging on the market place. These new technologies, in the form of solid-state lighting (SSL), offer the promise of increased productivity without more energy usage, and a higher quality of life.

BP Plc said on Friday it could seal its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well by next week as the House of Representatives voted to toughen regulation of offshore energy drilling. Incoming BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said the British energy giant would attempt a "static kill" operation on Tuesday to try to plug the blown-out deep-sea well that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. This marks a slight delay. The U.S. official overseeing the spill response, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, had said on Thursday he hoped the operation to pump mud and cement into the well could be performed as early as this weekend. As BP moved ahead with its plans, U.S. government scientists said South Florida, the Florida Keys and the U.S. East Coast likely will be spared from oil pollution from the spill despite earlier dire warnings.

Fusion power is the power generated by nuclear fusion reactions. In this kind of reaction, two light atomic nuclei fuse together to form a heavier nucleus and in doing so, release a large amount of energy. The major difference between fission and fusion reactors is that there is no possibility of a catastrophic accident in a fusion reactor resulting in major release of radioactivity to the environment. The primary reason is that nuclear fusion requires precisely controlled temperature, pressure, and magnetic field parameters to generate net energy. If the reactor were damaged, these parameters would be disrupted and the heat generation in the reactor would rapidly cease. In contrast, the fission products in a fission reactor continue to generate heat through beta-decay for several hours or even days after reactor shut-down, meaning that melting of fuel rods is possible even after the reactor has been stopped due to continued accumulation of heat.

Scientists aboard a U.S. research ship have started an around-the-clock search for elusive signs of oil lurking beneath the Gulf of Mexico's surface in what they jokingly call "Operation Dipstick." As debate rages among scientists over how much oil remains in the water after BP Plc's massive oil spill, their research vessel circles above the blown-out Macondo well, some 40 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Oil is not visible on the surface around the well, but as waters reopen to fishing, many question what the crude will do to this season's fish, shrimp and oyster catch, as well as its long-term effect on marine life.

BP Plc aims to retrieve a failed blowout preventer atop its ruptured Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, the top U.S. official overseeing the oil spill response said on Monday. But first, the company hopes to fish out a 3,500-foot (1,066-meter) drillpipe believed to be hanging in the giant stack of pipes and valves to ease the removal and replacement with another blowout preventer.

A geomagnetic storm (or solar storm) is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a massive solar flares or related sun output. A geomagnetic storm is caused by a solar wind shock wave which typically strikes the Earth's magnetic field 3 days after the event on the sun. The effect on the earth can be small or it can be large. Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, will strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs. This is far larger than average.

As the proposed Cape Wind offshore wind farm in Massachusetts fends off some last ditch legal challenges to become the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., New Jersey passed a law this week that would ultimately make it the leading provider of offshore wind energy in the country.

What is the real story about the "missing oil". One study shows that most of the oil is gone, while another shows that there is still a whole lot of it in a mid-depth plume not visible from the surface. The answer might have been found in research announced today by Lawrence Berkeley Lab of the US Department of Energy. They found the plume alright, but they also found that microbial activity, spearheaded by a new and unclassified species, degrades oil much faster than anticipated. This degradation appears to take place without a significant level of oxygen depletion. The study notes “Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea psychrophilic (cold temperature) gamma-proteobacteria that are closely related to

BP Plc's newly named chief executive on Tuesday called the Gulf oil spill a "wake-up call" for the entire industry as the company tallied up its losses and disclosed two U.S. investigations. Bob Dudley, who will replace gaffe-prone Tony Hayward as chief executive on October 1, said safety would be among his highest priorities as the first American to lead BP tries to refurbish the British oil company's battered reputation. Image repair may become even tougher after BP said it would offset the cost of the spill against its taxes, costing U.S. taxpayers almost $10 billion. BP reported a second-quarter loss of $17 billion, including $32 billion in charges related to the oil spill, the largest in U.S. history. It also announced plans to sell $30 billion in assets over the next 18 months to help cover its liabilities.