The Cotopaxi volcano wakes up after nearly 100 years, and after a period of continuous seismic activity on its slopes, began erupting a plume of ash and gas 5 km high on 15th August 2015. The Cotopaxi is a volcano of the Andean belt or pacific ring fire, it is 5897 meters high and only 50 kilometers away from Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (commonly called ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (between approximately the International Date Line and 120°W), including off the Pacific coast of South America.
Beyond the ocean water temperatures, el Niño demontrates all its power with atmospheric and climatic events including: unprecedented floods (like the one swamping the atacama desert region in Chile), anchovy catches dwindling in Pacific coast of Peru, no hurricanes in the Central America coasts of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
The waters of Lake Titicaca turned to green and brown and the fish are scarce, mainly due to the pollution that is currently caused by product of waste water.
According to Minagri, actions will be promoted to decontaminate the whole Lake Titicaca between Peru and Bolivia, with the construction of treatment plants in towns and cities, to avoid waste water ending up in Lake Titicaca and Desaguadero River.
Both Peru and Bolivia contaminated. The city of Alto La Paz in Bolivia, with a population of one million 184 thousand 942 inhabitants is the major polluter at present. Almost half of the waste of the city is getting directly into the lake, while the other part is processed by the treatment plant Puchukollo.
The Puno region in Peru, which concentrates its inhabitants into a single point, also discharges its waste into Lake Titicaca.
Copacabana has become one of the most polluted with Tiquina points and Cohana. Waste of its growing population and its many visitors go straight into the lake.
Some months ago the European Union activated a cooperation project with Latin America (with particular attention to Andean and Amazonian regions), which was called BEPINET Progetti in america latina (biomass energy platforms implementation for training in Latin America – network). This project aims to the development of a network of technical-scientific know-how, embedded in the rural areas of the interested countries. For domestic usage such as heating and energy production, biomass represents an alternative renewable source in competition with fossil fuels, considering the local availability of vegetal and animal waste materials.
It is not the same cooperation project as many others, where you just take the technology to be applied, but the help aims to stimulate directly the activity of universities and institutions towards a better sensibility on the energy issue and its alternative, sustainable solutions in order to give more responsibility to the local communities, creating little networks between regions. The same project was also activated in Africa.
The fossil energetic sources (oil, gas, coal) are destined to get exhausted themselves: in the turn of 20, 50 or 100 years according to the exploitation that will be made, which has drastically increased during the last few years as a result of the economic development of emergent countries (such as China and India) and as the result of the lack of strong environmental politics from the western countries (USA and Europe). The greater part of the climatologists is convinced that the emissions of CO2 are the main cause of the world climate changing that we are experiencing, and that manifests itself with an increase of catastrophic events such as violent precipitations and drought, the dissolution of glaciers and the being left over of the desert zones. With the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, all the states of the Alpine arc have engaged themselves in the reduction of the harmful emissions.
Now, time has come to put in existence concrete measures in order to diminish the emissions, beginning from the private rooms. The greater percentage of the fossil fuel consumption in the houses comes from the heating (approximately 70%), which is understandable considering the typical climate of the Alpine zones. In the reduction of the energetic requirements through techniques of energetically efficient construction and reorganization, it is hidden therefore the best solution for emissions saving: ecoefficiency could be applied both on the new constructions and on the existing buildings. With the adoption of solar technologies (photovoltaic and solar thermal) and modern techniques of coibentazione, the energetic requirement for the heating can be reduced until 80-90%. Today it is possible to think about the energetic saving as a great opportunity of cultural innovation, of valorisation of the natural resources (beginning from the wood). The Alps represent undoubtedly the perfect place where we can experience and make successful the technologies of the ecoefficiency.
Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) technology uses a system of mirrors and lenses to focus sunlight more directly and intensely onto photovoltaic cells. The goal is to reduce cost-per-watt by using PV material more fully and more efficiently and by using less of it. Moreover it seems to be the good answer in order to contain the weight and to enhance reliability, durability and scalability of photovoltaic panels particularly in remote sites, helping a widespread diffusion of solar renewable energy.
In the field of world energy production, two main features seem to emerge interestingly: photovoltaic energy and biofuels. Wind energy maintains its good position. The high price of oil is leading to a large number of research and development activities in the field of renewable energy. The production of photovoltaic cells was a 44% greater during 2005 than during 2004, sustained by the Japanese technology and by the high demand coming from Germany and Japan itself.
The European production of biodiesel has been a 65% greater than during 2004. Also the production of bioethanol is growing, above all in America, where USA and Brazil are the main producers. With 15 billions of bioethanol liters produced in 2005, USA cover a 2.7% of their total fuel consumption. The high price of oil helps the production of bioethanol in countries as Brazil, where a long experience permitted to develop reliable methods to produce biofuels at lower prices in comparison with oil derivatives.
Germany represents the 50% of the whole production of world biodiesel, the 35% of photovoltaic energy and the 30% of wind energy. The direction is given, some doubts remain over the effective sustainability of this model.
With the objective to produce bioethanol taking advantage of the cells metabolic activity, the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) has developed methods for the efficient production of biofuels from residuals of agricultural cultivations. In addiction to bio-ethanol, taking advantage to the fermentation processes you could manufacture bioplastics, pigments and drugs. Opportune bioengineering changes in cellular metabolism and enzymatic functions are in development in order to concur to use the biomass as main raw material in place of oil and its derivatives.
Undoubtedly the substitution of the benzine with products of biological origin as bioethanol would resolve the problem of the emissions of CO2, as they would be balanced during the growth of the plants themselves. But how many hectares of cultivations (sugar cane, beet, etc) will have to be used in order to produce bio-ethanol in such amount to replace partially the fuel produced from oil? How many hectares of amazonian forest will have to be destroyed in order to make space to the extensive cultivations of soy and sugar cane? Perhaps the study of the Finnish institute moves in the right direction indicating as possible source of biomass the agricultural residuals (woods and cellulose): in this case the raw materials availability would be increased, but the fermentation processes taking to biofuel synthesis are more complex.
This site uses cookies. If you consent, accept this message. For more options, read the Privacy Policy
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.