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November 10, 2010

ECONOTES 2010-11-10: Environmental Headlines for the Houston Region

Featured

  1. Abilene’s Water- Stolen and Poisoned (Texas Green Report, 11/09/2010)
    Coal-fired power plants are the number one user of water in the US. The proposed Tenaska coal plant has already asked the city of Abilene for 2 million gallons of water each day to keep the plant running. The coal plant will use additional water in order to clean the somek stacks in an atempt to reduce pollution. The smoke stacks may be cleaned, but the water is released back into the environment with all the pollutants.
    http://texasgreenreport.wordpress.com
  2. Texas quietly gains a place in the sun with its first solar farm (Ronnie Crocker – Houston Chronicle, 11/06/2010)
    Texas established its first solar farm in San Antonio. It went online last Thursday, and has 215,000 photovoltaic panels that turn the sun’s rays into power. The state is currently developing six more solar projects. Although solar power is expensive, it is seen as a developing field, which may soon take off.
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7282083.html
  3. Rising grain costs show folly of continuing federal ethanol subsidies (Houston Chronicle, 11/09/2010)
    The rising cost of grain has sparked a debate of whether or not to extend subsidies for corn-based ethanol. Although ethanol has been viewed as a green alternative, it requires large quantities of fresh water and fertilizer to produce. It also delivers less than half the energy of conventional gasoline per gallon. Although it might not be efficient to extend the subsidies for corn-based ethanol, there may be a future in developing a fuel source from nonfood vegetable matter.
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/7287368.html

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