Do you have information on companies, government activities, programs, news, R&D, events, etc. relating to alternative/renewable/green energy [e.g., solar power, wind power, biofuels, hydroelectricity, waste-to-fuel, hybrids & all-electric vehicles, geothermal] and energy conservation?  If so, please post the information on GreenEnergyForEarth.com.  We are seeking non-paid volunteer contributors who want to increase their exposure to the increasing, highly targeted readership.  Register with a “user ID” [scroll down on far right column under “Meta”] and email address & we will upgrade your status from “commenter” to “contributor” who can write posts and page articles.  If you are just interested in reading about green energy and conservation, sign up for our RSS feed and go to http://www.Technorati.com to list GreenEnergyForEarth.com as a Favorite.

See The New York Times article for a full discussion.

 Oct 8, 2008 – The NY Times reported on a United Nations meeting taking place in Rome concerned with rising food prices around the world.  Of course, it is not the only factor, but biofuel is part of the cause.  Farmers are shifting to producing crops that command higher prices and these include those used in making biofuel.  Increasing the problem is that a number of countries are providing incentives [> US$10 billion in 2006] for biofuels.  Possibly, over time the agriculture industry will accommodate producing sufficient crops for reasonably priced food crops and biofuel crops.  Finally, biofuels aren’t grown.  Crops that are converted to biofuel are grown.  Recently, with biofuels and other alternative energy systems, analysts are attempting to quantify the total energy cost of a process.  Some analysts assert that there is large energy use and production of CO2 emissions to produce the biofuel.  They claim that only production of biofuel from used cooking oil and Brazilian sugar cane are environmentally better than traditional fossil fuels.  Thus, the European Union has cut it previous 10% goal of renewable biofuel by 2020 in half.

HSBC is a major international bank [NYSE: HBC ] that recently placed institutional newspaper ads. Taking up most of the space are 3 pictures of wind turbine towers; the first says “nature”, the middle picture says “future” and the bottom one says “eyesore”. What has this to do with their banking operations?

If you check out their website there is a copy of a speech given by titled “Towards a Low Carbon Global Economy: Environmental Challenges, Practical Solutions.” Now comes the coincidental [?] part: the speaker was their Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings plc, Stephen K. Green . Mr. Green speaking about HSBC’s green activities. In it, Mr. Green states that, “Climate change is the fundamental issue facing humanity this century.” “We at HSBC are on a long journey towards becoming more sustainable. What we have found…that it has demonstrable benefits for the company itself.” I won’t go into all the details that you can find on their website , but they claim that they are now carbon neutral and are spending US$90 million on improving their own carbon footprint. New software to shut off 300,000 computers at the end of the day will save about US$30 million/yr.

So was their ad meaningless? Not altogether. They got mentioned in GreenEnergyForEarth.com & we now know that their Chairman is Mr. Green .