News

Aker Solutions has won a contract to perform the world’s first tests for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a cement production plant. The CO2 technology company won the award from Norcem, in cooperation with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA). It did not disclose the contract’s value. Aker Solutions says it will perform long-term testing [...]

Gas and coal power plants equipped with carbon capture, transport and storage technology have the potential to be cost competitive with other low-carbon power generation in the UK by the early 2020s, according to a government task force report. The CCS Cost Reduction Task Force’s final report says power plants with CCS technology could deliver [...]

Here’s the latest standards and compliance news affecting corporate environmental and energy executives. Today’s briefing includes nine items. The Department of the Interior yesterday released an updated draft proposal that it says establishes safety standards for hydraulic fracturing on public and Indian lands, while increasing flexibility for oil and gas developers. The department received over [...]

US power plants cut emissions from nitrous oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and CO2 in 2011 even as overall electricity generation increased, according to data from the Energy Information Administration and the EPA. In 2011, power plant NOx and SO2 emissions were 70 percent and 72 percent lower, respectively, than they were in 1990 when [...]

The Innovation Center for US Dairy has published a guide to help dairy companies and farms measure and report on sustainability. The Stewardship and Sustainability Guide for US Dairy identifies indicators for assessing dairy sustainability and communicating results. The indicators are based on scientific life cycle assessment studies commissioned by the Innovation Center, and the [...]

Shipping pollution from sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrous oxides (NOx) along busy trade routes can equal carbon dioxide-driven ocean acidification, a study says. Sulfur in marine fuel oil and atmospheric nitrogen create SOx and NOx in the exhaust gases from ships. According to the research paper that will be published in the journal Geophysical Research [...]

Cloud-based safety data sheet (SDS) and chemical data management company SiteHawk has expanded its chemical indexing services to 32 languages. The company says the expansion is in response to the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) as well as customer and market needs to index or catalog chemical data in multiple languages to support workplace safety and [...]

Despite widespread global use of payments for ecosystem services, more can be done to share information and learning garnered from such projects, according to research published in the journal Ecosystem Services. In Payments for ecosystem services: A review and comparison of developing and industrialized countries, researchers reviewed every published paper that has addressed payments for [...]

Building materials manufacturer Owens Corning is building a 2.6 MW (DC) solar generation project at its thermal and acoustical insulation plant in Delmar, NY. Scheduled for completion in late 2013, the solar project is designed to supply more than 6 percent of the plant’s annual electricity needs. Constellation will finance, build, own and maintain the [...]

European Commission investigators raided the offices of oil companies BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Statoil as well as data collector Platts as part of a larger inquiry into price manipulation of the global crude market. The unannounced inspections were carried out because of concerns the companies may have colluded in reporting distorted prices to a [...]