its really surprising what you notice in the newspapers once you really start to read it instead of skimming it.

in saturdays paper there were 3 articles that in some way were about helping the enviroment.

firstly an article very closely linked to one that Adey posted about eco-farms.

200 km SE ,of us here in Edmonton a town is planning a "biomass technology cluster" with a straw-using plant.

once the facility is fully operational it will produce ethanol, a steam heated greenhouse using captured carbon dioxide, sell excess electrical power and produce a sugar substitute for diabetes

the other use  will be the production of lignin that is used in bioplatics.

All of this from straw.

Did you now that we now have the capability to store waste CO2 underground in liquid form ?

The premise is so simple, we capture our emissions, pump it underground, removing it from our atmosphere indefinately.

This storage will give us a long term stop gap to buy time for us and our planet.

Here in Canada is an excellent place to pioneer this technology. Under our Leduc Reef formation alone there is room for 1 gigatonne of CO2. If we inject 100 years worth of Albertas carbon production it will use less than 10 percent.

Well it sounds good to me and luckily our goverment feels the same way and will be giving the go ahead to a project very shortly.

Go Canada

The 3rd and final newspaper report was about a local builder who is offering the option of installing in your new homes, a Natural Gas refuelling station.

Apparently here in Alberta there are about 5,000 natural gas powered vehicles.

The unit is attached to your homes natural gas system, so you refuel at home and it is added to your utility bill. It does take along time (8-10 hours) to fully refuel a vehicle so this system is perfect, fill whilst you sleep.