- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
The greenhouse effect keeps the earth's average temperature at around 14°C. Without it, the planet would be too cold to support human life. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere raise the earth's temperature by trapping energy from the sun after it has hit the earth's surface, rather than allowing it to escape back into space.
Industry:Natural environment
A hybrid car is one that has both a petrol engine and an electric motor and switches between them according to the driving conditions. It is different from a dual-fuel vehicle, which uses two types of liquid fuel.
Industry:Natural environment
Hydrocarbons are compounds made up of hydrogen and carbon only. All fossil fuels - such as coal, oil and gas - are hydrocarbons, until they are burnt when they mix with oxygen, creating (amongst other gases) CO2.
Industry:Natural environment
Hydropower (or hydroelectric power) is the generation of electricity using the power of falling water.
Industry:Natural environment
Inert gases are those, including helium and neon, that are not normally chemically reactive. The inert gases argon and krypton are often used in sealed double glazing units because they don't conduct heat as well as air, so they provide better insulation.
Industry:Natural environment
An agreement between two parties whereby one party struggling to meet its emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol earns emission reduction units from another party's emission removal project. The JI is a flexible and cost-efficient way of fulfilling Kyoto agreements while also encouraging foreign investment and technology transfer.
Industry:Natural environment
A kilowatt-hour is an amount of energy equivalent to a power of one kilowatt (a thousand watts) running for one hour. The unit is commonly used on electricity meters. If you know how many kilowatt-hours of energy your household uses, you can translate this into kilograms of CO2 emitted by multiplying it by 0.527. A megawatt hour (MWh) is an amount of energy equivalent to the power of one megawatt (a million watts) running for one hour. Similarly, a gigawatt hour (GWh) is a billion watts for one hour, and a terawatt hour (TWh) is a trillion. While your domestic gas bill will be set out in kWh, the output for a power station, for example, will obviously be expressed in one of these much larger units.
Industry:Natural environment
A megatonne is one million tonnes. It is commonly used to describe the large amounts of CO2 emitted by power stations.
Industry:Natural environment
Mercury (chemical symbol Hg) is a metal that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure. It is used in the manufacture of low-energy lightbulbs (CFLs and other fluorescent lights), and extra care must be taken in their disposal, especially when they are broken, because of mercury's toxicity.
Industry:Natural environment
Methane is a hydrocarbon, the main component of natural gas and among the six greenhouse gases to be curbed under the Kyoto protocol. As a greenhouse gas it is estimated to have a warming effect about 25 times as great as CO2. (Compared to CO2 its effects are greater but last for a shorter period). As a fuel, it is used in electricity generation and in the form of compressed natural gas it can be used as vehicle fuel. Methane is produced during the decomposition of many materials in landfill, while about 16% of methane emissions are caused by livestock's digestive processes.
Industry:Natural environment
