Fifth EERC Documentary on Carbon Sequestration to Premiere on Public Television: Program Airs on Prairie Public Broadcasting Monday Night at 9:30 p.m. CDT
October 14, 2010
GRAND FORKS, N.D. --- The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota is releasing the fifth in a series of documentaries focused on carbon sequestration and global climate change. Global Energy and Carbon: Tracking Our Footprint will premiere regionwide Monday, October 18, 2010, at 9:30 p.m. CDT (check your local listings) on Prairie Public Broadcasting, Fargo, North Dakota.
This half-hour documentary follows families in the United States, India, and the African country of Cameroon to examine how energy is used in three different economies: industrialized, emerging, and developing. The documentary explores options for managing carbon emissions from energy use while providing adequate access to energy for the world's growing populations.
John Harju, Associate Director for Research at the EERC, said "The program takes audiences into the homes of six families to show how their access to energy makes a difference in their lifestyles and how their daily energy use contributes to their household carbon footprints."
Global Energy and Carbon: Tracking Our Footprint is produced by Prairie Public, in partnership with the EERC's Plains CO2 Reduction (PCOR) Partnership. The PCOR Partnership is a public-private sector collaboration of U.S. and Canadian stakeholders in the northern Great Plains.
"The PCOR Partnership is bringing knowledge and people together to lay the groundwork for safe and practical carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration projects in our region," said PCOR Partnership Program Manager Ed Steadman. "One of the main objectives of the PCOR Partnership is to inform the public about managing CO2 to mitigate the threat of climate change. This film takes us right into people's homes to show the sources and volumes of carbon emissions and asks the question: how can people around the world access the energy they need and reduce carbon emissions?"
The PCOR Partnership is one of seven regional partnerships within the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Program, managed by the DOE Office of Fossil Energy and implemented through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Funding is provided by NETL, the PCOR Partnership members, and the members of Prairie Public.
The PCOR Partnership-Prairie Public team has released four previous documentaries. The first, called Nature in the Balance: CO2 Sequestration, was released in May 2005 and introduced audiences to the concept of capturing carbon from human activities and putting it into long-term storage (sequestration). The second, Reducing Our Carbon Footprint: The Role of Markets, was released in April 2008 and provided an introduction to carbon management and the role of carbon markets in helping to finance projects that will help lead to a low-carbon world.
The third documentary, Out of the Air-Into the Soil: Land Practices That Reduce Atmospheric Carbon Levels, released in September 2008, discusses the effects that proper landscape management can have on managing human carbon emissions. And the fourth documentary, Managing Carbon Dioxide: The Geologic Solution, was released in November 2009 and tells the story of how the discovery of natural deposits of underground CO2 and the use of CO2 in oil fields to increase production led to the emerging practice of putting CO2 from human activities into long-term storage deep underground.
Clips from the first four documentaries, as well as full streaming versions, are available at www.undeerc.org/pcor.
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Derek Walters, Communications and Outreach Manager
(701) 777-5113, firstname.lastname@example.org