Coal plant draws opposition

Excerpts from the Globe's environmental blog.

The state may be a leader in pushing green energy, but coal is undeniably in our future. Friday, dozens of youth activists in the region delivered a pile of coal to the state's Executive Office of Energy and the Environment to tell officials they don't want it to be.

The protesters are angry that the state is allowing a Somerset power plant owned by NRG Energy to use an experimental technology known as coal gasification that will capture pollutants - but not carbon dioxide, the key culprit in global warming.

"Not only does coal hurt the people near coal plants, and the people of the coal fields, but we will all feel the effects of climate change," said one of the protesters, Dago Lamat.

It used to be that piping plovers and people didn't mix: Since 1986, beaches have been periodically closed to vehicles and even people to protect nests. But for the second year in a row, the wee birds have returned to raise young at teeming Revere Beach.

"For two years in a row, one of America's most popular urban beaches has played host to a species ranked as threatened on both the Massachusetts and the federal Endangered Species Lists," said Ian Bowles, state secretary of energy and environmental affairs. "This is positive news for renewal of our historic coasts."

It can be a wrenching decision for those trying to live the good green life: Should you install compact fluorescent lights knowing that if broken, they pose a small risk of mercury poisoning to infants, young children and pregnant women?

Now, Brown University researchers may have come up with a way to allow you to have the spiral lights - and capture virtually all the mercury vapor if they happen to break. Engineering professor Robert Hurt and colleagues discovered a nanomaterial that operates like a sponge to absorb mercury from a broken CFL.

The researchers, who have applied for patents, hope to see the cloth packed in with the lights when they are sold. That way, they can absorb mercury if the fragile lights break in the packaging.

BETH DALEY