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Canada Oil Sands An unknown volume of water has been released from a holding pond at Suncor Energy’s oil sands project in Alberta, Reuters reported. The water was released into the Athabasca River, though it is unclear if the water contained toxic materials. China Water Pollution Another wave of dead animals has hit China’s waterways, [...]
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Canada Oil Sands An unknown volume of water has been released from a holding pond at Suncor Energy’s oil sands project in Alberta, Reuters reported. The water was released into the Athabasca River, though it is unclear if the water contained toxic materials. China Water Pollution Another wave of dead animals hit China’s waterways Sunday, [...]
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Oil sand mining operations in Alberta, Canada have been shown to cause increased levels of the toxic pollutants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, in nearby lakes, according to a study from a team of Canadian researchers, reported The New York Times. The research tested sediment deposits from six lakes surrounding Fort McMurray dating back about [...]
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Push-back on the transportation of tar sands equipment through a wilderness corridor reflects civic resistance to North American fossil fuel boom.
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Energy and Climate The world’s top scientists are urging governments to look at water and energy as a single, linked issue and say that growing demands for both resources is one of three major global dilemmas, the Guardian reported. How dirty are Canada’s oil sands? Reuters looks at Europe and Canada’s battle over how to [...]
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Subir Bhattacharjee — a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta and one of Canada’s top water quality experts — tells Circle of Blue about the water cycle of the tar sands while he attends a high-level conference in Alberta, Canada.
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Energy South Africa may invest $78 billion in new nuclear power plants, a hydropower project and a coal-fired power plant in order to keep up with energy demand, Business Week reported. A European Union expert committee failed to reach a decision on a proposal that would label fuel from tar sands as highly polluting, pushing [...]
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Droughts South-East England is officially in a state of drought, the Press Association reported, citing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Guardian has mapped out the affected regions. As rivers and reservoirs in England and Wales are running low after two dry winters, water industry executives have again called for regulatory reforms [...]
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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that shale gas production would undermine the still-emerging renewable energy sector in the United States, according to Yale Environment 360. Meanwhile, two groups of scientists at Cornell University are dueling over whether the climate impact of shale gas is bigger or smaller than coal’s, Associated Press [...]
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The Japanese government plans to open a robot-run super farm in the tsunami-hit Miyagi prefecture, Wired UK reported. The so-called “Dream Project” will feature unmanned tractors and robotic farmers, and will channel back the carbon dioxide produced by the machinery to crops to boost their growth. Canada’s natural resources minister accused opponents of a project [...]
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Unlike the other oil-rich, water-poor Gulf states, by 2024 Qatar plans to produce up to 70 percent of its food domestically, by spending massively to boost crop yields and convert semi-desert into farmland, Reuters reported. But many economists and agricultural experts say Qatar’s plans do not make economic sense. There isn’t enough research on the [...]
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Environmentalist Bill McKibben talks to the Guardian about tar sands, Obama and the fight over climate change on the eve of the final hearing on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Zebra mussels and agricultural runoff are wreaking havoc on fish populations in the Great Lakes, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a recent study by [...]
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Severe water shortages due to the La Nina weather pattern are threatening island communities in the South Pacific. Six months of low rainfall have left Tuvalu and Tokelau in a state of emergency and relying on bottled water. Officials also worry that the lack of rain will damage crops and spur a food shortage, according [...]
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More Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water, according to a recent Nielsen survey. Why isn’t basic infrastructure keeping up with South Africa’s technological revolution, and are other African countries following in these footsteps? Asia The president of a major Chinese company warned that Myanmar’s decision last week to halt construction [...]
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The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Project, designed to carry crude from the oil sands in Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, will have minimal impact on the environment, according to the final environmental impact assessment report released last Friday by the U.S. State Department, Politico reported. But the State Department insists the fate of the [...]
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There are about 6,000 toxins that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not got around to regulating in municipal drinking water systems, according to Forbes. While EPA has begun to develop regulations to remove these chemicals from tap and bottled water, the industry has made efforts to delay or prevent their implementation. Hydropower Despite calls [...]
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If the Republican-sponsored bill passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, the final decision could come by the beginning of November.
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TransCanada Corp, the company that hopes to build the Keystone XL pipeline to take crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to Texas, has underestimated the number and volume of spills that could occur on the line, according to an independent analysis by a water resources engineer at the University of Nebraska, Reuters reported. The company [...]
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The U.S. Department of State will hold public meetings in five states before it decides whether to grant permission for the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport Canadian oil sands petroleum to refiners in Texas, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert argues that “just about every decision that [the Obama] Administration has made [...]
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About 28,000 barrels of crude oil spilled from a broken pipeline in northern Alberta, Canada. Though none of the oil reached flowing water, the spill is reported to be the biggest in the country since 1975, according to UPI. Hear more about Canada’s oil sands, and the prospects and barriers of increasing Chinese imports of [...]
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