Over the last 5 years, Portugal has forged ahead in the use of renewable energy.  Now nearly 45 percent of the electricity in their grid comes from renewable sources, up from 17% five years ago.  They use a mixture of wind, hydropower, solar and ocean waves, according to an article in the New York Times.

Next year, in 2011, Portugal expects to be the first nation to establish a national network of charging stations for electric cars.

Prime Minister José Sócrates used a landslide victory in 2005 to push through the program over the objections of the country's fossil fuel companies.  It cost him.  In 2009 he won by a far smaller percentage.  It cost the ratepayers as well.  The Portuguese have long paid about twice what Americans pay for electricity and prices have risen 15% in the last five years, accompanied by much grumbling.

Governor Gregoire signed a bill into law, the Forest Biomass Supply Agreements Bill (2SHB 2481) that was passed nearly unanimously through the legislature near the end of the regular session.  Peter Goldmark, Lands Commissioner, requested the bill as part of the Department of Natural Resource's new emphasis on making use of forest biomass to encourage green industry in rural areas, thin out forests and prevent forest fires.

The Department of Natural Resources has announced partnerships with 4 pilot biomass projects, including one involving IWF and our partner Atlas Pellets, the largest wood pellet producer in Washington State, to move renewable energy from woody biomass along in Washington State.  In a Press Release, Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said that the four partnerships "will put their technologies to work using forest products they purchase from state trust lands to produce clean, sustainable energy and rural jobs".

Libby, Montana, is one of those old mining towns that got the short stick environmentally after the logging and mining companies closed down, leaving severely polluted earth and air behind them.  It was designated as a Superfund site in 2000 as a result of the asbestos-contaminated soils left in the area when W.R. Grace closed down the last vermiculite mine.  Much has been written and chronicles about the asbestos dangers to the population of 2900 remaining folks.

In Oxnard, California, an onion farmer, Steve Gill, has been using juice from the 40% of the discarded portions of onions that Gills Onions processes, about 150 tons of waste a day, to create energy to run refrigerators and lighting at the 14-acre plant.  By generating their own electricity from the waste of their production processes, the processing plant saves $700,000 each year on electricity costs plus another $400,000 a year on disposal costs.

A full 5% of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere today comes from the manufacturing of cement and concrete.  In the cement manufacturing process, about a ton of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere for every ton of cement that’s made.  Liv Haselbach, an Environmental Engineering professor at Washington State University, thinks that can be changed.  She is working on a process to develop concrete that will reabsorb the CO2 back into the concrete.  And then, the CO2 will be captured, or sequestered in carbon emissions terminology, and taken out of the atmosphere permanently.