A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.
By Jasper Copping
Existing technologies require an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.
Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.
The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.
As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.
Cylinders arranged over a cubic metre of the sea or river bed in a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts. This is more efficient than similar-sized turbines or wave generators, and the amount of power produced can increase sharply if the flow is faster or if more cylinders are added.
A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.
Systems could be sited on river beds or suspended in the ocean. The scientists behind the technology, which has been developed in research funded by the US government, say that generating power in this way would potentially cost only around 3.5p per kilowatt hour, compared to about 4.5p for wind energy and between 10p and 31p for solar power. They say the technology would require up to 50 times less ocean acreage than wave power generation.
The system, conceived by scientists at the University of Michigan, is called Vivace, or "vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy".
Michael Bernitsas, a professor of naval architecture at the university, said it was based on the changes in water speed that are caused when a current flows past an obstruction. Eddies or vortices, formed in the water flow, can move objects up and down or left and right.
"This is a totally new method of extracting energy from water flow," said Mr Bernitsas. "Fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices shed by the bodies of the fish in front of them. Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other's wake."
Such vibrations, which were first observed 500 years ago by Leonardo DaVinci in the form of "Aeolian Tones", can cause damage to structures built in water, like docks and oil rigs. But Mr Bernitsas added: "We enhance the vibrations and harness this powerful and destructive force in nature.
"If we could harness 0.1 per cent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people. In the English Channel, for example, there is a very strong current, so you produce a lot of power."
Because the parts only oscillate slowly, the technology is likely to be less harmful to aquatic wildlife than dams or water turbines. And as the installations can be positioned far below the surface of the sea, there would be less interference with shipping, recreational boat users, fishing and tourism.
The engineers are now deploying a prototype device in the Detroit River, which has a flow of less than two knots. Their work, funded by the US Department of Energy and the US Office of Naval Research, is published in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.
Respect your animals, earth and water. EPA Approved Hazardous Waste Transporter, Bio Waste Transporter (SDVOBE) and (DVBE) Certified, Disabled Veteran Owned Enterprise #46015 EPA # 000213637
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
How Geothermal Heat Pumps Could Power the Future
By Michael Schirber, Special to LiveScience
A schematic of a typical geothermal heat pump with an additional hot water heater. Credit: Geo-Heat Center Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies — the power of the future.
The term "geothermal energy" might bring to mind hot springs and billows of steam rising from the soil, but you can get energy from the ground without moving to Iceland or Yellowstone. You just need a geothermal heat pump.
"We call anything below the ground geothermal," said John Lund, director of the Geo-Heat Center at the Oregon Institute of Technology.
This includes geothermal heating, in which hot underground water is used to heat a building, and geothermal power, in which steam from very hot underground rock (more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit) is used to drive an electric generator.
However, these hydrothermal resources are only available in select areas. A geothermal heat pump (sometimes called a ground source heat pump) can work anywhere.
"They are the fastest growing geothermal use in the world," Lund told LiveScience, with about 20 percent annual growth.
Refrigerate the outdoors
If you've ever touched the tubes on the back of a working refrigerator, you know that it is pulling heat from the inside and radiating it to the rest of the kitchen.
A heat pump is like a refrigerator run backwards. It pulls heat from outdoors (as if it were trying to cool the outside) and releases it indoors.
In both a fridge and a heat pump, a system of tubes circulates a refrigerant fluid that becomes hot when compressed and cold when expanded.
To heat a home, the hot compressed fluid is typically passed through a heat exchanger that warms the air that feeds into a duct system. This "spent" fluid is then cooled through expansion and brought into contact with a ground source, so it can "recharge" with heat.
Although pumping the fluid requires electricity, a geothermal heat pump is more efficient than any alternative heating system. In fact, current models can produce as much as 4 kilowatts of heat for every 1 kilowatt of electricity. This is because they are not generating heat, but rather moving it from the outside.
And some heat pumps can cool as well as heat a home. A valve controls the direction of the fluid, so that heat can flow in both directions.
Down to earth
Some people are familiar with heat pumps that exchange heat with the air outside. These sometimes get lukewarm reviews because they do not work well when the temperature drops below freezing — just when you need them the most.
Geothermal heat pumps overcome this problem by exchanging heat with the ground, which maintains a constant temperature between 45 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the location.
"You wouldn't notice the difference between a home with a geothermal heat pump and one with a gas furnace," Lund said.
There are a number of ways to pull heat from the ground.
The most popular is a vertical geothermal heat pump, in which holes are drilled 150 to 200 feet below the surface. Pipes installed in these holes circulate water (with a dash of anti-freeze) that brings up heat to warm the refrigerant fluid.
An alternative is the horizontal heat pump, where the water-filled pipes are laid about 6 feet deep over a wide area. Although less expensive, these systems require a lot of land to heat a moderate-size building.
For those who live near a body of water or who have their own water well, it is possible to use that water directly as the outside heat source.
Ground swell
The biggest drawback for geothermal heat pumps is that their initial cost can be several times that of traditional heating and cooling systems. The installation for a typical house can run from $6,000 to $13,000, according to ToolBase Services, a housing industry resource.
However, geothermal heat pumps can pay for themselves over time with reduced energy bills. A homeowner can save 30 to 70 percent on heating and 20 to 50 percent on cooling costs over conventional systems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This may be why their popularity is growing. The United States leads the way with close to a million geothermal heat pumps, mostly in the Midwest and East Coast. Another million units can be found throughout Europe and Canada.
"Maybe in Antarctica it wouldn't work, but everywhere else it does," Lund said.
A schematic of a typical geothermal heat pump with an additional hot water heater. Credit: Geo-Heat Center Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies — the power of the future.
The term "geothermal energy" might bring to mind hot springs and billows of steam rising from the soil, but you can get energy from the ground without moving to Iceland or Yellowstone. You just need a geothermal heat pump.
"We call anything below the ground geothermal," said John Lund, director of the Geo-Heat Center at the Oregon Institute of Technology.
This includes geothermal heating, in which hot underground water is used to heat a building, and geothermal power, in which steam from very hot underground rock (more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit) is used to drive an electric generator.
However, these hydrothermal resources are only available in select areas. A geothermal heat pump (sometimes called a ground source heat pump) can work anywhere.
"They are the fastest growing geothermal use in the world," Lund told LiveScience, with about 20 percent annual growth.
Refrigerate the outdoors
If you've ever touched the tubes on the back of a working refrigerator, you know that it is pulling heat from the inside and radiating it to the rest of the kitchen.
A heat pump is like a refrigerator run backwards. It pulls heat from outdoors (as if it were trying to cool the outside) and releases it indoors.
In both a fridge and a heat pump, a system of tubes circulates a refrigerant fluid that becomes hot when compressed and cold when expanded.
To heat a home, the hot compressed fluid is typically passed through a heat exchanger that warms the air that feeds into a duct system. This "spent" fluid is then cooled through expansion and brought into contact with a ground source, so it can "recharge" with heat.
Although pumping the fluid requires electricity, a geothermal heat pump is more efficient than any alternative heating system. In fact, current models can produce as much as 4 kilowatts of heat for every 1 kilowatt of electricity. This is because they are not generating heat, but rather moving it from the outside.
And some heat pumps can cool as well as heat a home. A valve controls the direction of the fluid, so that heat can flow in both directions.
Down to earth
Some people are familiar with heat pumps that exchange heat with the air outside. These sometimes get lukewarm reviews because they do not work well when the temperature drops below freezing — just when you need them the most.
Geothermal heat pumps overcome this problem by exchanging heat with the ground, which maintains a constant temperature between 45 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the location.
"You wouldn't notice the difference between a home with a geothermal heat pump and one with a gas furnace," Lund said.
There are a number of ways to pull heat from the ground.
The most popular is a vertical geothermal heat pump, in which holes are drilled 150 to 200 feet below the surface. Pipes installed in these holes circulate water (with a dash of anti-freeze) that brings up heat to warm the refrigerant fluid.
An alternative is the horizontal heat pump, where the water-filled pipes are laid about 6 feet deep over a wide area. Although less expensive, these systems require a lot of land to heat a moderate-size building.
For those who live near a body of water or who have their own water well, it is possible to use that water directly as the outside heat source.
Ground swell
The biggest drawback for geothermal heat pumps is that their initial cost can be several times that of traditional heating and cooling systems. The installation for a typical house can run from $6,000 to $13,000, according to ToolBase Services, a housing industry resource.
However, geothermal heat pumps can pay for themselves over time with reduced energy bills. A homeowner can save 30 to 70 percent on heating and 20 to 50 percent on cooling costs over conventional systems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This may be why their popularity is growing. The United States leads the way with close to a million geothermal heat pumps, mostly in the Midwest and East Coast. Another million units can be found throughout Europe and Canada.
"Maybe in Antarctica it wouldn't work, but everywhere else it does," Lund said.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
EPA moves to ease pollution rules
Matthew Blake 11/25/08 8:15 AM
The Environmental Protection Agency seems on the brink of issuing a new regulation that would make it easier for power plants to operate longer hours — and emit more pollution.
Under the proposed rule, power plants would be able to measure their rate of emissions on an hourly basis instead of their annual total output. As long as the hourly emissions stay at or below the plant’s established maximum, the plant would be treated as if it were operating cleanly — even if its total annual emissions increased as plant managers stepped up output.
Under the current policy, power plants that seek to operate longer must install pollution-control equipment. The proposed rule, expected to be finalized in the next two weeks, would increase the life span of older power plants without owners having to install costly new pollution-control equipment.
The rule, though, may be in conflict with a 2007 Supreme Court case, Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp. In a 9-0 ruling, the justices decided that the Clean Air Act required Duke Energy to install pollution-control equipment if its annual pollution output increased. The court made clear that power plants must measure their pollution based on annual output, not an hourly rate.
The proposed power-plant rule marks a final attempt by the Bush administration to radically revise the way environmental laws are applied, especially the Clean Air Act. Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has sought to weaken the traditional regulatory authority of many federal agencies — like the Food and Drug Admin. and Consumer Product Safety Commission — to make them more friendly to business. This anti-regulatory stand has had perhaps its most sweeping effect on the EPA.
But the administration’s drive to weaken environment safeguards has gotten it into legal trouble. Since Bush took office in 2001, the EPA has issued 27 air-pollution regulations. Seventeen were either partly or entirely thrown out by the D.C. circuit court, which oversees cases involving federal regulation. One, the Duke Energy case, was reversed by the Supreme Court.
In many of the rulings, judges used caustic language in striking down the administration’s position. They lectured EPA officials on elementary legal principles, like the importance of carefully reading the language of a law. The agency has been compared to Humpty Dumpty and the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Not only judges have given the administration a tongue-lashing. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have repeatedly charged that the EPA is undermining the spirit of the Clean Air Act, which passed in 1963 and was strengthened in 1977 and 1990.
Boxer and Waxman have vowed to fight the proposed power-plant regulation. They may well have an ally in the federal court system.
“EPA historically has great credibility in federal courts,” said E. Donald Elliot, who was the agency’s chief lawyer during the George H.W. Bush administration and is now in private practice. “But it has recently had a pretty abysmal record. It has lost the confidence of the courts.”
The easing of pollution controls on power plants stems from an interpretation of “new source review” rules outlined in the Clean Air Act. The law says that before an industry can create a new source of air pollution, the EPA must review it.
In this case, coal-fired power plants — 70 percent of which are between 27 and 57 years old — could install new equipment that would allow them to operate for longer periods of time. Increased operational hours would lead to more emissions of chemical compounds, like nitrogen oxide, that produce smog.
To avoid EPA review — likely to result in the plants having to install pollution-control equipment– the new regulation would measure pollution at an hourly rate.
“We’re changing the way we evaluate totals, not the amount of pollution put out by plants,” said Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman.
But the change in how totals are evaluated could go against Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp.
In that case, Duke Energy, which operates power plants in North and South Carolina, upgraded its plants to keep them running longer hours, resulting in more pollution emissions.
The company contended that it did not have to submit its plant modifications to the EPA for review because its hourly rate of emissions had stayed steady. In rejecting that argument, Justice David Souter wrote that the relevant Clean Air Act provisions “clearly do not define a major modification in terms of an increase in the hourly emissions rate.”
“Each of the thresholds,” Souter continued, “is described in tons per year.”
Environmental lawyers see no reason why the administration’s new power plant regulation would be judged any differently.
“This is the latest in a long line of EPA rules regarding coal-fired power plants that will be overturned,” predicted Jennifer Peterson, an attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project, which specializes in clean-air litigation.
One such rule is the 2006 D.C. circuit court decision, New York v. EPA. In that case, the court decided that the EPA misread a Clean Air Act provision that says “any physical change” in a power plant that increases pollutants requires the power plant to install pollution control equipment.
EPA said that the word “any” was superfluous and that the agency can decide when physical changes are big enough to merit regulation. The D.C. circuit court found EPA’s logical unfathomable.
“Only in a Humpty Dumpty world,” wrote Judge Judith Rogers, “would Congress be required to use superfluous words while an agency could ignore an expansive word that Congress did use. We decline to adopt such a world view.”
Shrader, the EPA spokesman, declined to go into why the new power plant rule would pass legal muster. He pointed out that the EPA is still working on the rule, and language has not been finalized.
EPA has not only lost 18 of 27 clean air court decisions, fully13 of those cases were rejected as contrary to the language of the Clean Air Act. At times, EPA’s defiance of the Clean Air Act has appeared to exasperate the court.
In overturning an EPA rule that allowed some power plants to exceed limits on mercury emissions, the court compared the EPA with the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” The Queen disregarded laws and proclaimed “off with her head” before a verdict was issued.
In reversing EPA’s loosening of when industrial plants need to seek emission permits, the court implored EPA regulators to do three things: “(1) read the statute; (2) read the statute, (3) read the statute.”
“Repeated losses on plain language grounds,” wrote Waxman, the oversight chairman, in a letter to Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator, “suggest a reckless determination to pursue the administration’s policy objectives regardless of legal limits.”
Waxman added that he was “gravely concerned” about the proposed regulation to change how power plant pollution is measured. Meanwhile, Boxer, (D-Calif.) chairman of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, said she will investigate EPA if the regulation is finalized.
Environmentalists who are veterans to battling EPA over air regulations say that the Bush administration is unique in its flouting of environmental law.
“I’ve never seen such a sheer volume of cases and such a dismal track record by the EPA in court,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “They’ve lost so many cases that you either have to conclude their lawyers are idiots or their polices are illegal. I’d go with the second.”
Elliot, the EPA’s counsel during the George H.W. Bush administration, also said that the number of court losses is without precedent.
“The administration has intentionally pushed the limits of its discretion,” Elliot said. “They do things that might make sense from a policy perspective but not from the language of the statute.”
The result, Elliot said, was that the “good reputation of EPA” has been lost in the D.C. court.
But while this Bush administration has not succeeded in changing the legal reading of the Clean Air Act, critics contend that its actions have had a strong effect on air pollution regulation.
“The failure to weaken rules should be celebrated,” said John Walke, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defense Council who has litigated several cases against Bush’s EPA. “But the failure to carry out the Clean Air Act has enormous public-health consequences.”
The Environmental Protection Agency seems on the brink of issuing a new regulation that would make it easier for power plants to operate longer hours — and emit more pollution.
Under the proposed rule, power plants would be able to measure their rate of emissions on an hourly basis instead of their annual total output. As long as the hourly emissions stay at or below the plant’s established maximum, the plant would be treated as if it were operating cleanly — even if its total annual emissions increased as plant managers stepped up output.
Under the current policy, power plants that seek to operate longer must install pollution-control equipment. The proposed rule, expected to be finalized in the next two weeks, would increase the life span of older power plants without owners having to install costly new pollution-control equipment.
The rule, though, may be in conflict with a 2007 Supreme Court case, Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp. In a 9-0 ruling, the justices decided that the Clean Air Act required Duke Energy to install pollution-control equipment if its annual pollution output increased. The court made clear that power plants must measure their pollution based on annual output, not an hourly rate.
The proposed power-plant rule marks a final attempt by the Bush administration to radically revise the way environmental laws are applied, especially the Clean Air Act. Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has sought to weaken the traditional regulatory authority of many federal agencies — like the Food and Drug Admin. and Consumer Product Safety Commission — to make them more friendly to business. This anti-regulatory stand has had perhaps its most sweeping effect on the EPA.
But the administration’s drive to weaken environment safeguards has gotten it into legal trouble. Since Bush took office in 2001, the EPA has issued 27 air-pollution regulations. Seventeen were either partly or entirely thrown out by the D.C. circuit court, which oversees cases involving federal regulation. One, the Duke Energy case, was reversed by the Supreme Court.
In many of the rulings, judges used caustic language in striking down the administration’s position. They lectured EPA officials on elementary legal principles, like the importance of carefully reading the language of a law. The agency has been compared to Humpty Dumpty and the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Not only judges have given the administration a tongue-lashing. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have repeatedly charged that the EPA is undermining the spirit of the Clean Air Act, which passed in 1963 and was strengthened in 1977 and 1990.
Boxer and Waxman have vowed to fight the proposed power-plant regulation. They may well have an ally in the federal court system.
“EPA historically has great credibility in federal courts,” said E. Donald Elliot, who was the agency’s chief lawyer during the George H.W. Bush administration and is now in private practice. “But it has recently had a pretty abysmal record. It has lost the confidence of the courts.”
The easing of pollution controls on power plants stems from an interpretation of “new source review” rules outlined in the Clean Air Act. The law says that before an industry can create a new source of air pollution, the EPA must review it.
In this case, coal-fired power plants — 70 percent of which are between 27 and 57 years old — could install new equipment that would allow them to operate for longer periods of time. Increased operational hours would lead to more emissions of chemical compounds, like nitrogen oxide, that produce smog.
To avoid EPA review — likely to result in the plants having to install pollution-control equipment– the new regulation would measure pollution at an hourly rate.
“We’re changing the way we evaluate totals, not the amount of pollution put out by plants,” said Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman.
But the change in how totals are evaluated could go against Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp.
In that case, Duke Energy, which operates power plants in North and South Carolina, upgraded its plants to keep them running longer hours, resulting in more pollution emissions.
The company contended that it did not have to submit its plant modifications to the EPA for review because its hourly rate of emissions had stayed steady. In rejecting that argument, Justice David Souter wrote that the relevant Clean Air Act provisions “clearly do not define a major modification in terms of an increase in the hourly emissions rate.”
“Each of the thresholds,” Souter continued, “is described in tons per year.”
Environmental lawyers see no reason why the administration’s new power plant regulation would be judged any differently.
“This is the latest in a long line of EPA rules regarding coal-fired power plants that will be overturned,” predicted Jennifer Peterson, an attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project, which specializes in clean-air litigation.
One such rule is the 2006 D.C. circuit court decision, New York v. EPA. In that case, the court decided that the EPA misread a Clean Air Act provision that says “any physical change” in a power plant that increases pollutants requires the power plant to install pollution control equipment.
EPA said that the word “any” was superfluous and that the agency can decide when physical changes are big enough to merit regulation. The D.C. circuit court found EPA’s logical unfathomable.
“Only in a Humpty Dumpty world,” wrote Judge Judith Rogers, “would Congress be required to use superfluous words while an agency could ignore an expansive word that Congress did use. We decline to adopt such a world view.”
Shrader, the EPA spokesman, declined to go into why the new power plant rule would pass legal muster. He pointed out that the EPA is still working on the rule, and language has not been finalized.
EPA has not only lost 18 of 27 clean air court decisions, fully13 of those cases were rejected as contrary to the language of the Clean Air Act. At times, EPA’s defiance of the Clean Air Act has appeared to exasperate the court.
In overturning an EPA rule that allowed some power plants to exceed limits on mercury emissions, the court compared the EPA with the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” The Queen disregarded laws and proclaimed “off with her head” before a verdict was issued.
In reversing EPA’s loosening of when industrial plants need to seek emission permits, the court implored EPA regulators to do three things: “(1) read the statute; (2) read the statute, (3) read the statute.”
“Repeated losses on plain language grounds,” wrote Waxman, the oversight chairman, in a letter to Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator, “suggest a reckless determination to pursue the administration’s policy objectives regardless of legal limits.”
Waxman added that he was “gravely concerned” about the proposed regulation to change how power plant pollution is measured. Meanwhile, Boxer, (D-Calif.) chairman of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, said she will investigate EPA if the regulation is finalized.
Environmentalists who are veterans to battling EPA over air regulations say that the Bush administration is unique in its flouting of environmental law.
“I’ve never seen such a sheer volume of cases and such a dismal track record by the EPA in court,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “They’ve lost so many cases that you either have to conclude their lawyers are idiots or their polices are illegal. I’d go with the second.”
Elliot, the EPA’s counsel during the George H.W. Bush administration, also said that the number of court losses is without precedent.
“The administration has intentionally pushed the limits of its discretion,” Elliot said. “They do things that might make sense from a policy perspective but not from the language of the statute.”
The result, Elliot said, was that the “good reputation of EPA” has been lost in the D.C. court.
But while this Bush administration has not succeeded in changing the legal reading of the Clean Air Act, critics contend that its actions have had a strong effect on air pollution regulation.
“The failure to weaken rules should be celebrated,” said John Walke, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defense Council who has litigated several cases against Bush’s EPA. “But the failure to carry out the Clean Air Act has enormous public-health consequences.”
Monday, November 24, 2008
Solar Panels Are Vanishing, Only to Reappear on the Internet
By KATE GALBRAITH
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves.
Ken Martin Jr. lost 58 panels from the roof of an office building he owns in Santa Rosa, Calif. He estimated they would cost $75,000 to replace.
Solar panels were stolen from Jim and Shayna Powell’s roof in Palm Desert, Calif.
Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.
“I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said.
Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.
Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet.
Last November, someone tried to sell solar panels stolen from a toll road in Newport Beach for $100 each on eBay. Detectives from the local police department entered the bidding and won the panels, which were worth nearly $1,500 apiece, according to Sgt. Evan Sailor, a Newport Beach police spokesman.
When Nathan Tyrone Mitchell, a resident of Santa Monica, showed up to hand over the panels, the police greeted him with handcuffs.
Mr. Mitchell, who was charged with possession of stolen property, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Charles Stoddard, said that his client had bought the panels from someone on Craigslist and then tried to resell them on eBay for a profit. “Our contention is that Mr. Mitchell is just an innocent purchaser who kind of got caught up in this thing,” Mr. Stoddard said.
In Contra Costa County, detectives accustomed to handling thefts of copper began to notice solar panels going missing in the last six months, according to Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s office.
This summer, an officer on patrol became suspicious when he spotted a man trying to sell solar panels to a home builder who had advertised on Craigslist that he was seeking panels. The officer confiscated the panels and, after detectives found that they matched panels stolen from a school, a California man was charged. Mr. Lee says that law enforcement agencies are investigating about a half-dozen other solar-panel thefts in his area.
“We were surprised and kind of caught off guard” by the solar thefts, said Mr. Lee, who recommends people engrave their driver’s license numbers onto their panels for better identification.
For Tom McCalmont, president of Regrid Power, a solar installation business near San Jose, the problem hit home in late June. His own headquarters was struck by thieves, who took more than $30,000 worth of panels from the roof.
The panels were disassembled expertly, he said, leading him to suspect that someone in the solar industry had done it. He urges clients to install video cameras and alarms for their solar arrays, and likens his own revamped security system to Fort Knox.
“This is the crime of the future,” Mr. McCalmont said.
After suffering a solar theft, some victims find unusual ways to protect their property. Ms. Hoffman, of Desert Hot Springs, could not sleep for several weeks during the string of thefts from her roof.
One night, she waited beside a nearby building and watched her house in an attempt to catch the thieves, causing a suspicious neighbor to call the police. She vows that if she ever catches the culprits, “they’re not going to leave walking” — especially if she feels threatened.
So far, with the losses still modest, homeowners’ insurance is processing the claims with little resistance. Ms. Hoffman’s insurer, State Farm, is paying $95,000 to replace her entire system. She plans to install an alarm, and possibly a video camera.
Not far from Ms. Hoffman, in the town of Palm Desert, Jim and Shayna Powell were devastated after thieves took 19 of their solar panels in June, causing their electricity bill to shoot from $3 to $300 just when they needed air-conditioning the most. “Of all the times of year to steal the panels,” Mr. Powell said in frustration.
Beyond California, solar-power markets are comparatively small, so thefts are still rare — but they are spreading. In the last 18 months, Oregon’s highway department has lost a few panels used to power portable traffic message boards.
In Minnesota, the Sauk River Watershed District has lost at least eight small panels, worth $250 each, in the last few years, according to Melissa Roelike, who coordinates the water quality monitoring program there.
In response, the district has taken steps to protect the panels, including putting them in trees and atop poles. Thieves promptly stole one such panel.
“Obviously, hoisting them 20 feet in the air on a metal pipe does not work,” Ms. Roelike said.
In Europe, where the solar industry is well-established, thievery is entrenched, and measures to ward it off have become standard, including alarm systems and hard-to-unscrew panels.
But in the United States, installers are just coming to grips with the need for alarms, video cameras and indelible engraving of serial numbers. Some people fancy simpler solutions.
Ken Martin Jr. lost 58 panels, which will cost $75,000 to replace, this spring from the roof of a half-empty office building in Santa Rosa, Calif., that he owns. He is considering slapping paint on some parts of his remaining panels — bright pink paint.
“At least if someone comes across them and they’re painted, they’ll know that’s my color,” he said.
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves.
Ken Martin Jr. lost 58 panels from the roof of an office building he owns in Santa Rosa, Calif. He estimated they would cost $75,000 to replace.
Solar panels were stolen from Jim and Shayna Powell’s roof in Palm Desert, Calif.
Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.
“I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said.
Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.
Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet.
Last November, someone tried to sell solar panels stolen from a toll road in Newport Beach for $100 each on eBay. Detectives from the local police department entered the bidding and won the panels, which were worth nearly $1,500 apiece, according to Sgt. Evan Sailor, a Newport Beach police spokesman.
When Nathan Tyrone Mitchell, a resident of Santa Monica, showed up to hand over the panels, the police greeted him with handcuffs.
Mr. Mitchell, who was charged with possession of stolen property, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Charles Stoddard, said that his client had bought the panels from someone on Craigslist and then tried to resell them on eBay for a profit. “Our contention is that Mr. Mitchell is just an innocent purchaser who kind of got caught up in this thing,” Mr. Stoddard said.
In Contra Costa County, detectives accustomed to handling thefts of copper began to notice solar panels going missing in the last six months, according to Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s office.
This summer, an officer on patrol became suspicious when he spotted a man trying to sell solar panels to a home builder who had advertised on Craigslist that he was seeking panels. The officer confiscated the panels and, after detectives found that they matched panels stolen from a school, a California man was charged. Mr. Lee says that law enforcement agencies are investigating about a half-dozen other solar-panel thefts in his area.
“We were surprised and kind of caught off guard” by the solar thefts, said Mr. Lee, who recommends people engrave their driver’s license numbers onto their panels for better identification.
For Tom McCalmont, president of Regrid Power, a solar installation business near San Jose, the problem hit home in late June. His own headquarters was struck by thieves, who took more than $30,000 worth of panels from the roof.
The panels were disassembled expertly, he said, leading him to suspect that someone in the solar industry had done it. He urges clients to install video cameras and alarms for their solar arrays, and likens his own revamped security system to Fort Knox.
“This is the crime of the future,” Mr. McCalmont said.
After suffering a solar theft, some victims find unusual ways to protect their property. Ms. Hoffman, of Desert Hot Springs, could not sleep for several weeks during the string of thefts from her roof.
One night, she waited beside a nearby building and watched her house in an attempt to catch the thieves, causing a suspicious neighbor to call the police. She vows that if she ever catches the culprits, “they’re not going to leave walking” — especially if she feels threatened.
So far, with the losses still modest, homeowners’ insurance is processing the claims with little resistance. Ms. Hoffman’s insurer, State Farm, is paying $95,000 to replace her entire system. She plans to install an alarm, and possibly a video camera.
Not far from Ms. Hoffman, in the town of Palm Desert, Jim and Shayna Powell were devastated after thieves took 19 of their solar panels in June, causing their electricity bill to shoot from $3 to $300 just when they needed air-conditioning the most. “Of all the times of year to steal the panels,” Mr. Powell said in frustration.
Beyond California, solar-power markets are comparatively small, so thefts are still rare — but they are spreading. In the last 18 months, Oregon’s highway department has lost a few panels used to power portable traffic message boards.
In Minnesota, the Sauk River Watershed District has lost at least eight small panels, worth $250 each, in the last few years, according to Melissa Roelike, who coordinates the water quality monitoring program there.
In response, the district has taken steps to protect the panels, including putting them in trees and atop poles. Thieves promptly stole one such panel.
“Obviously, hoisting them 20 feet in the air on a metal pipe does not work,” Ms. Roelike said.
In Europe, where the solar industry is well-established, thievery is entrenched, and measures to ward it off have become standard, including alarm systems and hard-to-unscrew panels.
But in the United States, installers are just coming to grips with the need for alarms, video cameras and indelible engraving of serial numbers. Some people fancy simpler solutions.
Ken Martin Jr. lost 58 panels, which will cost $75,000 to replace, this spring from the roof of a half-empty office building in Santa Rosa, Calif., that he owns. He is considering slapping paint on some parts of his remaining panels — bright pink paint.
“At least if someone comes across them and they’re painted, they’ll know that’s my color,” he said.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Solar panels on graves give power to Spanish town
Solar panels sit on top of niches at the Santa Coloma de Gramenet cemetery, outside Barcelona, Spain,
Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy.
Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy program.
The power the 462 panels produces — equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes — flows into the local energy grid for normal consumption and is one community's odd nod to the fight against global warming.
"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif," said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy.
In row after row of gleaming, blue-gray, the panels rest on mausoleums holding five layers of coffins, many of them marked with bouquets of fake flowers. The panels face almost due south, which is good for soaking up sunshine, and started working on Wednesday — the culmination of a project that began three years ago.
The concept emerged as a way to utilize an ideal stretch of land in a town that wants solar energy but is so densely built-up — Santa Coloma's population of 124,000 is crammed into four square kilometers (1.5 square miles) — it had virtually no place to generate it.
At first, parking solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan.
"Let's say we heard things like, 'they're crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect!' "Fogue said in a telephone interview.
But town hall and cemetery officials waged a public-awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project, and the painstaking care with which it would be carried out. Eventually it worked, Fogue said.
The panels were erected at a low angle so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.
"There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed," Fogue said. "This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased."
The cemetery hold the remains of about 57,000 people and the solar panels cover less than 5 percent of the total surface area. They cost 720,000 euros ($900,000) to install and each year will keep about 62 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Serret said.
The community's leaders hope to erect more panels and triple the electricity output, Fogue said. Before this, the town had four other solar parks — atop buildings and such — but the cemetery is by far the biggest.
He said he has heard of cemeteries elsewhere in Spain with solar panels on the roofs of their office buildings, but not on above-ground graves.
Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy.
Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy program.
The power the 462 panels produces — equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes — flows into the local energy grid for normal consumption and is one community's odd nod to the fight against global warming.
"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif," said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy.
In row after row of gleaming, blue-gray, the panels rest on mausoleums holding five layers of coffins, many of them marked with bouquets of fake flowers. The panels face almost due south, which is good for soaking up sunshine, and started working on Wednesday — the culmination of a project that began three years ago.
The concept emerged as a way to utilize an ideal stretch of land in a town that wants solar energy but is so densely built-up — Santa Coloma's population of 124,000 is crammed into four square kilometers (1.5 square miles) — it had virtually no place to generate it.
At first, parking solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan.
"Let's say we heard things like, 'they're crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect!' "Fogue said in a telephone interview.
But town hall and cemetery officials waged a public-awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project, and the painstaking care with which it would be carried out. Eventually it worked, Fogue said.
The panels were erected at a low angle so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.
"There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed," Fogue said. "This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased."
The cemetery hold the remains of about 57,000 people and the solar panels cover less than 5 percent of the total surface area. They cost 720,000 euros ($900,000) to install and each year will keep about 62 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Serret said.
The community's leaders hope to erect more panels and triple the electricity output, Fogue said. Before this, the town had four other solar parks — atop buildings and such — but the cemetery is by far the biggest.
He said he has heard of cemeteries elsewhere in Spain with solar panels on the roofs of their office buildings, but not on above-ground graves.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
360 Wind Powered Wal-Mart Stores by April 2009
While the solar panel in this photo is pretty much a token renewable energy gesture, Wal-Mart’s wind power commitment is significantly more substantial.
Say what you like about Wal-Mart (and I certainly have said some less than flattering things), but sometimes the world’s largest retailer does something undeniably positive: Like make its first major purchase of wind power in the United States.
Announced yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores will be supplying 15% of the electricity in approximately 360 Texas stores and other facilities though wind power, purchased from Duke Energy. Wal-Mart says that the purchase will be the equivalent power of some 18,000 ordinary homes. Here are the rest of the details:
150 MW Wind Farm Will Provide Wal-Mart's Power
Duke will be generating the power from the under construction 150 MW Notrees Wind Power Project, which is expected to begin commercial operations in December and producing electricity for Wal-Mart by April 2009. Duke expects the project to produce about 226 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, an amount which will avoid emitting 139,000 tonnes of CO2. Or, if you prefer more down to earth references, Wal-Mart compares this to washing 108 million loads of laundry (“enough for every household in Austin, Texas to do laundry for a year”).
Speaking about the wind power purchase, Wal-Mart vice president of energy Kim Saylors-Laster said,
We’re purchasing renewable power at traditional energy rates. The wind power purchase will result in a significant decrease of greenhouse gas emissions and aligns perfectly with Wal-Mart’s long-term goal of being supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.
More at:
Say what you like about Wal-Mart (and I certainly have said some less than flattering things), but sometimes the world’s largest retailer does something undeniably positive: Like make its first major purchase of wind power in the United States.
Announced yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores will be supplying 15% of the electricity in approximately 360 Texas stores and other facilities though wind power, purchased from Duke Energy. Wal-Mart says that the purchase will be the equivalent power of some 18,000 ordinary homes. Here are the rest of the details:
150 MW Wind Farm Will Provide Wal-Mart's Power
Duke will be generating the power from the under construction 150 MW Notrees Wind Power Project, which is expected to begin commercial operations in December and producing electricity for Wal-Mart by April 2009. Duke expects the project to produce about 226 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, an amount which will avoid emitting 139,000 tonnes of CO2. Or, if you prefer more down to earth references, Wal-Mart compares this to washing 108 million loads of laundry (“enough for every household in Austin, Texas to do laundry for a year”).
Speaking about the wind power purchase, Wal-Mart vice president of energy Kim Saylors-Laster said,
We’re purchasing renewable power at traditional energy rates. The wind power purchase will result in a significant decrease of greenhouse gas emissions and aligns perfectly with Wal-Mart’s long-term goal of being supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.
More at:
Friday, November 21, 2008
Phone Makers Monitor Charger Energy Consumption
Mobile manufacturers launch star rating system comparing the energy consumption of chargers
November 19, 2008 - Espoo, Finland - A group of mobile manufacturers has launched a common energy rating system for chargers, making it easier for consumers to compare and choose the one that saves the most energy. The star rating system developed and supported by LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson is one of a series of measures being taken by the industry to reduce the environmental footprint of its products.
Many consumers are unaware that chargers consume electricity when disconnected from the phone but left plugged into the wall socket. Around two thirds of the energy used by mobile devices is wasted in this way. Manufacturers are addressing this by continually improving the efficiency of their chargers and in making it easier for consumers to pick the ones using the least energy.
The new rating system indicates how much energy each charger uses when left plugged into the wall socket after charging is completed. The ratings covers all chargers currently sold by the five companies, and range from five stars for the most efficient chargers down to zero stars for the ones consuming the most energy. If the more than three billion people owning mobile devices today switched to a four or five star charger, this could save the same amount of energy each year as produced by two medium sized power plants.
People will be able to visit the websites of each manufacturer to view and compare the results for every charger. The ratings are based on the European Commission's energy standards for chargers and the internationally recognized Energy Star standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. The ratings will be reviewed regularly and developed further in order to drive constant improvement.
Many of the manufacturers are also working on other ways to reduce energy consumption. Most major producers have begun introducing visual alerts into their devices to remind people to unplug the charger from the mains when the battery is fully charged.
The group of manufacturers was initially created as part of a European Commission Integrated Product Policy pilot project looking at how different industries could reduce the environmental impact of their products and inform consumers of better choices. Nokia proposed the mobile phone sector to the Commission and was joined by a number of manufacturers, operators and others in the industry.
November 19, 2008 - Espoo, Finland - A group of mobile manufacturers has launched a common energy rating system for chargers, making it easier for consumers to compare and choose the one that saves the most energy. The star rating system developed and supported by LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson is one of a series of measures being taken by the industry to reduce the environmental footprint of its products.
Many consumers are unaware that chargers consume electricity when disconnected from the phone but left plugged into the wall socket. Around two thirds of the energy used by mobile devices is wasted in this way. Manufacturers are addressing this by continually improving the efficiency of their chargers and in making it easier for consumers to pick the ones using the least energy.
The new rating system indicates how much energy each charger uses when left plugged into the wall socket after charging is completed. The ratings covers all chargers currently sold by the five companies, and range from five stars for the most efficient chargers down to zero stars for the ones consuming the most energy. If the more than three billion people owning mobile devices today switched to a four or five star charger, this could save the same amount of energy each year as produced by two medium sized power plants.
People will be able to visit the websites of each manufacturer to view and compare the results for every charger. The ratings are based on the European Commission's energy standards for chargers and the internationally recognized Energy Star standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. The ratings will be reviewed regularly and developed further in order to drive constant improvement.
Many of the manufacturers are also working on other ways to reduce energy consumption. Most major producers have begun introducing visual alerts into their devices to remind people to unplug the charger from the mains when the battery is fully charged.
The group of manufacturers was initially created as part of a European Commission Integrated Product Policy pilot project looking at how different industries could reduce the environmental impact of their products and inform consumers of better choices. Nokia proposed the mobile phone sector to the Commission and was joined by a number of manufacturers, operators and others in the industry.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Business Leader of the Week
John S. Shegerian, Chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International (ERI), discussed the urgent environmental and human rights implications of effective "e-waste" recycling today on "The Alan Autry Show," hosted by Fresno's Mayor Autry.
Shegerian was featured as a guest on the "Business Street: Business Leader of the Week" segment of Autry's show, on Fresno-based KYNO 1300 AM. Autry is a former NFL football player and actor. He achieved success by starring in the TV program "In the Heat of the Night," among other roles in film and television before becoming Fresno's Mayor.
As this week's "Business Leader of the Week," Shegerian shared insights on his personal life and career as a social entrepreneur, launching a number of businesses that benefit society and the environment, including his current venture, ERI, the nation's leading recycler of electronic waste.
"It's a great honor to have been named 'Business Leader of the Week' and to have been asked to guest on our great Mayor Autry's show," said Shegerian. "The Mayor has been very supportive of our environmental mission and of our effort to recycle lives by giving individuals a second chance at making a n honest living. At ERI we tip our hat to the excellent job he has done here in Fresno."
Now the largest recycler of electronic waste in the world, Fresno-headquartered Electronic Recyclers is licensed to de-manufacture and recycle televisions, computer monitors, computers, and other types of electronic equipment. ERI processes more than 140 million pounds of electronic waste annually.
Shegerian was featured as a guest on the "Business Street: Business Leader of the Week" segment of Autry's show, on Fresno-based KYNO 1300 AM. Autry is a former NFL football player and actor. He achieved success by starring in the TV program "In the Heat of the Night," among other roles in film and television before becoming Fresno's Mayor.
As this week's "Business Leader of the Week," Shegerian shared insights on his personal life and career as a social entrepreneur, launching a number of businesses that benefit society and the environment, including his current venture, ERI, the nation's leading recycler of electronic waste.
"It's a great honor to have been named 'Business Leader of the Week' and to have been asked to guest on our great Mayor Autry's show," said Shegerian. "The Mayor has been very supportive of our environmental mission and of our effort to recycle lives by giving individuals a second chance at making a n honest living. At ERI we tip our hat to the excellent job he has done here in Fresno."
Now the largest recycler of electronic waste in the world, Fresno-headquartered Electronic Recyclers is licensed to de-manufacture and recycle televisions, computer monitors, computers, and other types of electronic equipment. ERI processes more than 140 million pounds of electronic waste annually.
Plumbing the oceans could bring limitless clean energy
by Phil Mckenna
FOR a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.
It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.
"This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s.
This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world
As the price of fossil fuels soars, private companies from Hawaii to Japan are racing to build commercial OTEC plants. The trick is to exploit the difference in temperature between seawater near the surface and deep down (see diagram).
First, warm surface water heats a fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia or a mixture of ammonia and water. When this "working fluid" boils, the resulting gas creates enough pressure to drive a turbine that generates power. The gas is then cooled by passing it through cold water pumped up from the ocean depths via massive fibreglass tubes, perhaps 1000 metres long and 27 metres in diameter, that suck up cold water at a rate of 1000 tonnes per second. While the gas condenses back into a liquid that can be used again, the water is returned to the deep ocean. "It's just like a conventional power plant where you burn a fuel like coal to create steam," says Cohen.
The idea of tapping the ocean's different thermal layers to generate electricity was first proposed in 1881 by French physicist Jacques d'Arsonval but didn't receive much attention until the world oil crises of the 1970s. In 1979, a US government-backed partnership that included Lockheed Martin, lowered a cold water pipe from a barge off Hawaii that was part of an OTEC system generating 50 kilowatts of electricity. Two years later, a Japanese group built a pilot plant off the South Pacific island of Nauru capable of generating 120 kilowatts.
In the first flush of success, the US Department of Energy began planning a 40 megawatt test plant off Hawaii. Then in 1981, the funding for ocean thermal technologies began to dwindle. It dried up altogether in 1995 when the price of oil began to drop, eventually falling below $20 a barrel.
Now rising fuel costs have revived interest in this neglected technology. In September, the Department of Energy awarded its first grant for ocean thermal energy in more than a decade, giving Lockheed Martin $600,000 to develop a new generation of cold water pipes.
Cohen believes this could eventually lead to 500 MW OTEC plants on floating offshore platforms sending electricity to onshore grids via submarine cables, and factory ships "grazing" the open ocean for power.
Lockheed's first goal is to get a test facility up and running. The company has got together with Makai Ocean Engineering of Waimanalo, Hawaii, to build a 10 to 20 MW plant, most likely off Hawaii, that it hopes to have up and running in the next four to six years. The plant - including a 1000-metre pipe some 4 metres in diameter - would feed electricity to the island's energy grid via submarine cables.
While Lockheed gears up for its test facility, a plant for the US military could come online even sooner. OCEES International, based in Honolulu, is finishing designs for an ocean thermal facility to be built off the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is home to a major US military base.
The plant would provide 8 MW of electricity and would also power the desalination of 1.25 million gallons of seawater per day. OCEES says it could be up and running by the end of 2011.
At the moment Diego Garcia is powered entirely by diesel fuel, and base commanders see ocean thermal as a means to energy independence. "It's a strategic military installation in the middle of the Indian Ocean," says Harry Jackson of OCEES. "They don't want to rely on others to provide their power."
"I think OTEC has the potential to develop sufficient power output much quicker than wave buoys or tidal power would," says Bill Tayler, director of the US navy's Shore Energy Office. "It would take a lot of buoys to produce 8 to 10 MW of power. We're looking at them all but have our hopes on OTEC."
Still, both teams will have to work out issues such as how to connect the floating, bobbing platforms to fixed submarine power lines. Heat exchangers will have to be designed in a way that prevents excessive buildup of algae, barnacles and other marine organisms that could clog the system.
Read full article http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026836.000-plumbing-the-oceans-could-bring-limitless-clean-energy.html
FOR a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.
It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.
"This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s.
This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world
As the price of fossil fuels soars, private companies from Hawaii to Japan are racing to build commercial OTEC plants. The trick is to exploit the difference in temperature between seawater near the surface and deep down (see diagram).
First, warm surface water heats a fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia or a mixture of ammonia and water. When this "working fluid" boils, the resulting gas creates enough pressure to drive a turbine that generates power. The gas is then cooled by passing it through cold water pumped up from the ocean depths via massive fibreglass tubes, perhaps 1000 metres long and 27 metres in diameter, that suck up cold water at a rate of 1000 tonnes per second. While the gas condenses back into a liquid that can be used again, the water is returned to the deep ocean. "It's just like a conventional power plant where you burn a fuel like coal to create steam," says Cohen.
The idea of tapping the ocean's different thermal layers to generate electricity was first proposed in 1881 by French physicist Jacques d'Arsonval but didn't receive much attention until the world oil crises of the 1970s. In 1979, a US government-backed partnership that included Lockheed Martin, lowered a cold water pipe from a barge off Hawaii that was part of an OTEC system generating 50 kilowatts of electricity. Two years later, a Japanese group built a pilot plant off the South Pacific island of Nauru capable of generating 120 kilowatts.
In the first flush of success, the US Department of Energy began planning a 40 megawatt test plant off Hawaii. Then in 1981, the funding for ocean thermal technologies began to dwindle. It dried up altogether in 1995 when the price of oil began to drop, eventually falling below $20 a barrel.
Now rising fuel costs have revived interest in this neglected technology. In September, the Department of Energy awarded its first grant for ocean thermal energy in more than a decade, giving Lockheed Martin $600,000 to develop a new generation of cold water pipes.
Cohen believes this could eventually lead to 500 MW OTEC plants on floating offshore platforms sending electricity to onshore grids via submarine cables, and factory ships "grazing" the open ocean for power.
Lockheed's first goal is to get a test facility up and running. The company has got together with Makai Ocean Engineering of Waimanalo, Hawaii, to build a 10 to 20 MW plant, most likely off Hawaii, that it hopes to have up and running in the next four to six years. The plant - including a 1000-metre pipe some 4 metres in diameter - would feed electricity to the island's energy grid via submarine cables.
While Lockheed gears up for its test facility, a plant for the US military could come online even sooner. OCEES International, based in Honolulu, is finishing designs for an ocean thermal facility to be built off the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is home to a major US military base.
The plant would provide 8 MW of electricity and would also power the desalination of 1.25 million gallons of seawater per day. OCEES says it could be up and running by the end of 2011.
At the moment Diego Garcia is powered entirely by diesel fuel, and base commanders see ocean thermal as a means to energy independence. "It's a strategic military installation in the middle of the Indian Ocean," says Harry Jackson of OCEES. "They don't want to rely on others to provide their power."
"I think OTEC has the potential to develop sufficient power output much quicker than wave buoys or tidal power would," says Bill Tayler, director of the US navy's Shore Energy Office. "It would take a lot of buoys to produce 8 to 10 MW of power. We're looking at them all but have our hopes on OTEC."
Still, both teams will have to work out issues such as how to connect the floating, bobbing platforms to fixed submarine power lines. Heat exchangers will have to be designed in a way that prevents excessive buildup of algae, barnacles and other marine organisms that could clog the system.
Read full article http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026836.000-plumbing-the-oceans-could-bring-limitless-clean-energy.html
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
California Ups Renewable Energy Mandate to 33% by 2020
Written by Timothy B. Hurst
Published on November 17th, 20082 CommentsPosted in Center, Energy, Leader
Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Executive Order to Raise California’s Renewable Energy Goals to 33% by 2020 and Clear Red Tape for Renewable Energy Projects
In an executive order signed on Monday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger committed to getting a third of California’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Schwarzenegger made the announcement while speaking at a solar panel factory in Sacramento. California Executive Order S-14-08 puts the state’s renewable energy requirement at 33% by 2020, securing its place as the most aggressive renewable energy mandate in the country.
vote nowBuzz up!The order comes Just three days after Schwarzenegger issued another unprecedented executive order to state agencies telling them to make preparations for rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Schwarzenegger’s aggressive target, however, cannot be met without additional changes in the current policy landscape. In fact, just two weeks ago, California voters soundly rejected Proposition 7 which sought to increase the state’s renewable energy standard. Environmental groups were nearly unanimous in their opposition to Prop 7 because it created an exclusion for smaller utilities and power providers. Schwarzenegger said:
“…we won’t meet that goal doing business as usual, where environmental regulations are holding up environmental progress in some cases. This executive order will clear the red tape for renewable projects and streamline the permitting and siting of new plants and transmission lines. With this investment in renewable energy projects, California has a bright energy future ahead that will help us fight climate change while driving our state’s green economy.”
The Governor will propose legislative language that will codify the new higher standards and require all utilities, public and private, to meet the 33 percent target and spread implementation costs across all ratepayers with safeguards for low-income customers. The executive order will also allow for the expansion of eligibility for California’s RPS program to renewable energy generation from other western states.
The Governor made today’s announcement at the site of OptiSolar’s new plant in Sacramento, which will begin manufacturing solar panels in early 2009. When fully built out, the one-million-square-foot plant will be the largest photovoltaic solar panel manufacturing plant in North America.
Image: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Tags:
Published on November 17th, 20082 CommentsPosted in Center, Energy, Leader
Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Executive Order to Raise California’s Renewable Energy Goals to 33% by 2020 and Clear Red Tape for Renewable Energy Projects
In an executive order signed on Monday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger committed to getting a third of California’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Schwarzenegger made the announcement while speaking at a solar panel factory in Sacramento. California Executive Order S-14-08 puts the state’s renewable energy requirement at 33% by 2020, securing its place as the most aggressive renewable energy mandate in the country.
vote nowBuzz up!The order comes Just three days after Schwarzenegger issued another unprecedented executive order to state agencies telling them to make preparations for rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Schwarzenegger’s aggressive target, however, cannot be met without additional changes in the current policy landscape. In fact, just two weeks ago, California voters soundly rejected Proposition 7 which sought to increase the state’s renewable energy standard. Environmental groups were nearly unanimous in their opposition to Prop 7 because it created an exclusion for smaller utilities and power providers. Schwarzenegger said:
“…we won’t meet that goal doing business as usual, where environmental regulations are holding up environmental progress in some cases. This executive order will clear the red tape for renewable projects and streamline the permitting and siting of new plants and transmission lines. With this investment in renewable energy projects, California has a bright energy future ahead that will help us fight climate change while driving our state’s green economy.”
The Governor will propose legislative language that will codify the new higher standards and require all utilities, public and private, to meet the 33 percent target and spread implementation costs across all ratepayers with safeguards for low-income customers. The executive order will also allow for the expansion of eligibility for California’s RPS program to renewable energy generation from other western states.
The Governor made today’s announcement at the site of OptiSolar’s new plant in Sacramento, which will begin manufacturing solar panels in early 2009. When fully built out, the one-million-square-foot plant will be the largest photovoltaic solar panel manufacturing plant in North America.
Image: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Tags:
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
A quicker, easier way to make coal cleaner
Construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States is in danger of coming to a standstill, partly due to the high cost of the requirement -- whether existing or anticipated -- to capture all emissions of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. But an MIT analysis suggests an intermediate step that could get construction moving again, allowing the nation to fend off growing electricity shortages using our most-abundant, least-expensive fuel while also reducing emissions.
Instead of capturing all of its CO2 emissions, plants could capture a significant fraction of those emissions with less costly changes in plant design and operation, the MIT analysis shows.
"Our approach -- 'partial capture' -- can get CO2 emissions from coal-burning plants down to emissions levels of natural gas power plants," said Ashleigh Hildebrand, a graduate student in chemical engineering and the Technology and Policy Program. "Policies such as California's Emissions Performance Standards could be met by coal plants using partial capture rather than having to rely solely on natural gas, which is increasingly imported and subject to high and volatile prices."
Hildebrand will present her findings on Nov. 18 at the 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies in Washington. Her co-author is Howard J. Herzog, principal research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative and chair of the conference organizing committee.
The United States is facing a pressing need for more power plants that run essentially all the time. Renewable sources aren't suited to the task, nuclear plants can't be built quickly enough, and expanded reliance on natural gas raises price and energy-security concerns. Coal, which now supplies more than half of all U.S. electricity, seems the best option.
But as several states have started to regulate CO2 emissions, and others are expected to follow suit, some of the luster has come off coal. Amid the uncertainty, no one wants to be the "first mover" on building a new coal plant incorporating carbon capture and storage (CCS). Depending on the type of plant, carbon capture alone can increase the initial capital cost by 30 to 60 percent and decrease plant efficiency so that the cost per kilowatt-hour rises. That high cost would reduce a plant's economic competitiveness, meaning it might be called on to run on a limited basis, or not at all. Plus, CCS hasn't been proved at full scale, so no one knows exactly what to expect.
In Herzog's view, the call for full carbon capture is "a policy of inaction, a policy that won't move forward either new coal plants or the CCS technology." Partial capture could be a viable intermediate step.
The push for full capture (defined as 90 percent of the total) is in part economic: everyone assumed that 90 percent capture would -- due to economies of scale -- yield the lowest cost per ton of CO2 removed. Anything less than 90 percent would mean a higher per-ton cost.
To investigate that assumption, Hildebrand and Herzog modeled the technological changes and costs involved in capturing fractions ranging from zero to 90 percent. The model takes into account technological breakpoints. For example, carbon capture is achieved by a series of devices that absorb CO2, release it and compress it. Full capture may require two or more parallel series.
The model confirms that the cost per ton of CO2 removed declines as the number of captured tons increases. Not surprisingly, when the second series is added, cost per ton goes up, but it then quickly levels off. Cost per ton is thus roughly the same at, say, 60 percent capture as it is at 90 percent capture. Since there are no economies of scale to be gained by going to 90 percent, companies can remove less -- and significantly reduce their initial capital investment as well as the drop in efficiency once the plant is running.
The researchers conclude that as a near-term measure, partial capture looks promising. New coal plants with lower CO2 emissions would generate much-needed electricity while also demonstrating carbon capture and providing a setting for testing CO2 storage -- steps that will accelerate the large-scale deployment of full capture in the future.
Instead of capturing all of its CO2 emissions, plants could capture a significant fraction of those emissions with less costly changes in plant design and operation, the MIT analysis shows.
"Our approach -- 'partial capture' -- can get CO2 emissions from coal-burning plants down to emissions levels of natural gas power plants," said Ashleigh Hildebrand, a graduate student in chemical engineering and the Technology and Policy Program. "Policies such as California's Emissions Performance Standards could be met by coal plants using partial capture rather than having to rely solely on natural gas, which is increasingly imported and subject to high and volatile prices."
Hildebrand will present her findings on Nov. 18 at the 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies in Washington. Her co-author is Howard J. Herzog, principal research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative and chair of the conference organizing committee.
The United States is facing a pressing need for more power plants that run essentially all the time. Renewable sources aren't suited to the task, nuclear plants can't be built quickly enough, and expanded reliance on natural gas raises price and energy-security concerns. Coal, which now supplies more than half of all U.S. electricity, seems the best option.
But as several states have started to regulate CO2 emissions, and others are expected to follow suit, some of the luster has come off coal. Amid the uncertainty, no one wants to be the "first mover" on building a new coal plant incorporating carbon capture and storage (CCS). Depending on the type of plant, carbon capture alone can increase the initial capital cost by 30 to 60 percent and decrease plant efficiency so that the cost per kilowatt-hour rises. That high cost would reduce a plant's economic competitiveness, meaning it might be called on to run on a limited basis, or not at all. Plus, CCS hasn't been proved at full scale, so no one knows exactly what to expect.
In Herzog's view, the call for full carbon capture is "a policy of inaction, a policy that won't move forward either new coal plants or the CCS technology." Partial capture could be a viable intermediate step.
The push for full capture (defined as 90 percent of the total) is in part economic: everyone assumed that 90 percent capture would -- due to economies of scale -- yield the lowest cost per ton of CO2 removed. Anything less than 90 percent would mean a higher per-ton cost.
To investigate that assumption, Hildebrand and Herzog modeled the technological changes and costs involved in capturing fractions ranging from zero to 90 percent. The model takes into account technological breakpoints. For example, carbon capture is achieved by a series of devices that absorb CO2, release it and compress it. Full capture may require two or more parallel series.
The model confirms that the cost per ton of CO2 removed declines as the number of captured tons increases. Not surprisingly, when the second series is added, cost per ton goes up, but it then quickly levels off. Cost per ton is thus roughly the same at, say, 60 percent capture as it is at 90 percent capture. Since there are no economies of scale to be gained by going to 90 percent, companies can remove less -- and significantly reduce their initial capital investment as well as the drop in efficiency once the plant is running.
The researchers conclude that as a near-term measure, partial capture looks promising. New coal plants with lower CO2 emissions would generate much-needed electricity while also demonstrating carbon capture and providing a setting for testing CO2 storage -- steps that will accelerate the large-scale deployment of full capture in the future.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Don’t Call it a Wind Farm
It’s an EcoPower Centre: Canada’s Largest Wind Project
Though in the scheme of the world it’s solidly in the middle ranks of wind power project capacity, but given that the newly finished Melancthon EcoPower Centre, developed by Canadian Hydro, is Canada’s largest wind farm it’s still worth noting. Here are the details:
Under Construction Since 2005
Located near Shelburne, Ontario (northwest of Toronto), the Melancthon EcoPower Centre has a capacity of 199.5 MW and has been under construction since 2005. It commenced initial commercial operations after the 67.5 MW first phase was completed in in 2006. The final phase, which brought the project to its current nation-leading capacity, began construction in 2007.
All the electricity from the project is being sold to the Ontario Power Authority under two 20-year contracts.
Canadian Hydro says that it expects the wind farm’s annual output to be about 545 GWh, or enough power for 70,000 homes.
Though in the scheme of the world it’s solidly in the middle ranks of wind power project capacity, but given that the newly finished Melancthon EcoPower Centre, developed by Canadian Hydro, is Canada’s largest wind farm it’s still worth noting. Here are the details:
Under Construction Since 2005
Located near Shelburne, Ontario (northwest of Toronto), the Melancthon EcoPower Centre has a capacity of 199.5 MW and has been under construction since 2005. It commenced initial commercial operations after the 67.5 MW first phase was completed in in 2006. The final phase, which brought the project to its current nation-leading capacity, began construction in 2007.
All the electricity from the project is being sold to the Ontario Power Authority under two 20-year contracts.
Canadian Hydro says that it expects the wind farm’s annual output to be about 545 GWh, or enough power for 70,000 homes.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Green Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a great time to go green. The season of Thanksgiving is about celebrating the earth and what it has to offer us, so respecting the environment is a great way to send the planet an eco-friendly thank-you.
Using eco-friendly products, reducing, reusing and recycling during Thanksgiving can help diminish waste to the environment. An eco conscious Thanksgiving will enrich your family’s holiday experience, because you’ll know you have helped reduce the impact on the environment, something we all should be thankful for. Here are a few tips for having a green Thanksgiving.
When running around picking up all your necessities for the big day, make sure you bring along reusable bags. See if you can reduce the amount of waste you produce by buying only as much as you need and choosing products that come in packaging that can be recycled.
Reusable Shopping Bags
Buy locally grown food. It’s a great way to have a green Thanksgiving. Locally grown is generally organic and therefore good for your health and the environment. It requires less fuel to reach local store shelves which saves on fuel. It also contributes more to your local economy by supporting the local farmers and merchants. Foodroutes can help you find local merchants in your area.
Buy organic fruits, vegetable, (apples and potatoes are very high on the pesticide hit list, and retain huge amounts of the chemicals sprayed on them), and grains grown without chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Organic farming also increases soil fertility, prevents erosion, and is more cost-effective for farmers.
If you’re having Turkey as part of your dinner, search the Eat Well Guide. You can find types of meat by production methods, and locations where you can purchase an organic turkey. The “production methods” section allows you to select items labeled 100% vegetarian fed, grass fed, free-range, non-confined, no antibiotics, organic, etc. You can also contact your local grocery store and ask if they carry turkeys labeled “American Humane Certified,” or “USDA Certified Organic.”
Lift a glass of organic or biodynamic wine, (in recycled glasses of course), and give thanks to sustainability. Serve organic wine with “real” corks not plastic or twist off tops. Your eco-friendly Thanksgiving party can help preserve the cork industry.
Protect Our Earth Glasses
If you have to fly for the holidays, purchase carbon credits at Carbon Planet to offset your portion of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by your flight. A typical long-haul flight produces nearly four tons of carbon dioxide.
Plant a Tree as part of the family affair. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect and global warming. By planting one tree, in one year, that tree will absorb roughly 26 pounds of carbon dioxide and return enough oxygen to supply a family of four. The Plant-A-Tree-Today (PATT) Foundation was formed with its mission to react to problems caused by the massive and increasing levels of deforestation worldwide. Help raise awareness of environmental issues and the role forests play, take action against climate change, educate children on these issues and to Plant a tree this Thanksgiving.
Keep your thermostat at an acceptable setting, and start a fire in your fireplace to keep warm. If you normally keep your temperature at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, try lowering it two degrees on Thanksgiving. This will conserve extra energy.
Nature always decorates best, especially this time of year as the trees shed their brightly colored leaves. Take a nature walk and gather signs of the season from your local environment to create a simple, beautiful harvest centerpiece. With a little imagination, you can make great eco-friendly Thanksgiving decorations and have a lot of fun in the process. Gather found items such as pinecones, colored leaves, seedpods, branches and colorful berries and leaves. Place your treasures in recycled vases or bowls for a naturally green centerpiece.
Decorate your table with beeswax candles rather than petroleum-derived paraffin candles. The beeswax is not only healthier for you and the planet, but it smells better too! For an extra touch, fill a recycled glass bowl with seasonal grains, (such as corn), and place a pillar, (soy or beeswax), candle in the center.
Early Bird Candle
All flowers remind us of nature’s bounty, but not all flower companies are eco-friendly. Most spray their crops with heavy amounts of pesticides. Order a gorgeous Thanksgiving centerpiece from Organic Bouquet. They’ll give ten percent of your purchase to The Nature Conservancy, and send your flowers in biodegradable, corn-based flower sleeves. Head to your pantry for empty containers such as seltzer bottles, spice jars, wine bottles, cans, etc. to use as vases for your flower arrangements.
Purchase recycled paper products, if you need to have disposable plates and cups. Otherwise, use regular plates and cups that can be washed so you don’t produce any waste.
Try and cook just the right amount of food for your family and friends because nothing is worse than wasted food. However, if you have too much food, send your guests home with a doggie bag. You can also donate leftover food to a local shelter or food bank. Mahalo can help you with this.
Sustainable Agriculture Chardonnay 2006
Whatever else you do on Thanksgiving, make it a time to say thank you to the people in your life who matter most. Many of the best moments in life are those spent with friends and family. As part of your eco-friendly Thanksgiving, give thanks to the many ways the environment sustains and enriches our lives.
Using eco-friendly products, reducing, reusing and recycling during Thanksgiving can help diminish waste to the environment. An eco conscious Thanksgiving will enrich your family’s holiday experience, because you’ll know you have helped reduce the impact on the environment, something we all should be thankful for. Here are a few tips for having a green Thanksgiving.
When running around picking up all your necessities for the big day, make sure you bring along reusable bags. See if you can reduce the amount of waste you produce by buying only as much as you need and choosing products that come in packaging that can be recycled.
Reusable Shopping Bags
Buy locally grown food. It’s a great way to have a green Thanksgiving. Locally grown is generally organic and therefore good for your health and the environment. It requires less fuel to reach local store shelves which saves on fuel. It also contributes more to your local economy by supporting the local farmers and merchants. Foodroutes can help you find local merchants in your area.
Buy organic fruits, vegetable, (apples and potatoes are very high on the pesticide hit list, and retain huge amounts of the chemicals sprayed on them), and grains grown without chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Organic farming also increases soil fertility, prevents erosion, and is more cost-effective for farmers.
If you’re having Turkey as part of your dinner, search the Eat Well Guide. You can find types of meat by production methods, and locations where you can purchase an organic turkey. The “production methods” section allows you to select items labeled 100% vegetarian fed, grass fed, free-range, non-confined, no antibiotics, organic, etc. You can also contact your local grocery store and ask if they carry turkeys labeled “American Humane Certified,” or “USDA Certified Organic.”
Lift a glass of organic or biodynamic wine, (in recycled glasses of course), and give thanks to sustainability. Serve organic wine with “real” corks not plastic or twist off tops. Your eco-friendly Thanksgiving party can help preserve the cork industry.
Protect Our Earth Glasses
If you have to fly for the holidays, purchase carbon credits at Carbon Planet to offset your portion of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by your flight. A typical long-haul flight produces nearly four tons of carbon dioxide.
Plant a Tree as part of the family affair. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect and global warming. By planting one tree, in one year, that tree will absorb roughly 26 pounds of carbon dioxide and return enough oxygen to supply a family of four. The Plant-A-Tree-Today (PATT) Foundation was formed with its mission to react to problems caused by the massive and increasing levels of deforestation worldwide. Help raise awareness of environmental issues and the role forests play, take action against climate change, educate children on these issues and to Plant a tree this Thanksgiving.
Keep your thermostat at an acceptable setting, and start a fire in your fireplace to keep warm. If you normally keep your temperature at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, try lowering it two degrees on Thanksgiving. This will conserve extra energy.
Nature always decorates best, especially this time of year as the trees shed their brightly colored leaves. Take a nature walk and gather signs of the season from your local environment to create a simple, beautiful harvest centerpiece. With a little imagination, you can make great eco-friendly Thanksgiving decorations and have a lot of fun in the process. Gather found items such as pinecones, colored leaves, seedpods, branches and colorful berries and leaves. Place your treasures in recycled vases or bowls for a naturally green centerpiece.
Decorate your table with beeswax candles rather than petroleum-derived paraffin candles. The beeswax is not only healthier for you and the planet, but it smells better too! For an extra touch, fill a recycled glass bowl with seasonal grains, (such as corn), and place a pillar, (soy or beeswax), candle in the center.
Early Bird Candle
All flowers remind us of nature’s bounty, but not all flower companies are eco-friendly. Most spray their crops with heavy amounts of pesticides. Order a gorgeous Thanksgiving centerpiece from Organic Bouquet. They’ll give ten percent of your purchase to The Nature Conservancy, and send your flowers in biodegradable, corn-based flower sleeves. Head to your pantry for empty containers such as seltzer bottles, spice jars, wine bottles, cans, etc. to use as vases for your flower arrangements.
Purchase recycled paper products, if you need to have disposable plates and cups. Otherwise, use regular plates and cups that can be washed so you don’t produce any waste.
Try and cook just the right amount of food for your family and friends because nothing is worse than wasted food. However, if you have too much food, send your guests home with a doggie bag. You can also donate leftover food to a local shelter or food bank. Mahalo can help you with this.
Sustainable Agriculture Chardonnay 2006
Whatever else you do on Thanksgiving, make it a time to say thank you to the people in your life who matter most. Many of the best moments in life are those spent with friends and family. As part of your eco-friendly Thanksgiving, give thanks to the many ways the environment sustains and enriches our lives.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
How to: Recycle Your Computer
Computers sure are handy when they are working (TreeHugger would have a tough time making it without them) but once they've chewed their last byte, things can get a little messy. Toxic chemicals, carcinogens and heavy metals are all part of what makes their clocks tick, and improper disposal can bring them all a little too close for human comfort. Computer recycling is nothing new, but getting your old electronics to the great motherboard in the sky can be tricky to do responsibly. For years, developed countries have been exporting tons of electronic waste for inexpensive, labor-intensive recycling and disposal, mostly to China. It's been illegal to import e-waste into China for dirty recycling and dumping since 2000, but smuggling, corruption and China's appetite for scrap keep it coming. An article over at Salon has some good tips to prevent your old electronics from being melted down over a rudimentary stove or being tossed into a landfill.
One of the best ways to get clean recycling is simple: just ask questions. A reputable recycler should be able to tell you where hardware is sent, and if the company exports or uses prison labor. The recycler should also be able to tell you how it handles data destruction; you'll want the recycler or reuse organization to wipe the hard drive for you so any personal information doesn't end up where it doesn't belong. If you are donating your equipment to a reuse organization, ask if equipment is tested before it is passed on for donation and if the company only ships working equipment. Ask who their recipient organizations are. If the answer to any of these questions is, "We don't know," or, "We can't tell you," it may be time to send your equipment elsewhere.
One of the easiest options is to use your computer manufacturer's recycling program, though most major manufacturers charge fees and require you to do the packing and shipping. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a good guide to responsible recycling, finds many of the manufacture take-back programs wanting and publishes a report card on the environmental effectiveness of most of them.
The Rethink Program, hosted by eBay has a good computer recycling FAQ section and many useful links to recyclers, as do CompuMentor's Tech Soup site and the EPA's eCycling website. Be aware, though, that the recyclers listed on these sites have not been vetted or approved by these organizations in any way. The Basel Action Network also carries a list of electronics recyclers that have signed their stewardship pledge, under which recyclers agree not to export e-waste or add it to landfill, or use prison labor, and to document where equipment, parts and materials go.
If your machine still functions (and not just as a paperweight), then seeing that it is reused is perhaps the best option. Companies like RetroBox and FreeGeek build computers out of salvaged parts; the latter has a list of like-minded organizations that can be a good starting place for recycling or reusing your machine. For a more complete list of NGOs, government agencies and manufacturers who recycle, check out the article at ::Salon.
One of the best ways to get clean recycling is simple: just ask questions. A reputable recycler should be able to tell you where hardware is sent, and if the company exports or uses prison labor. The recycler should also be able to tell you how it handles data destruction; you'll want the recycler or reuse organization to wipe the hard drive for you so any personal information doesn't end up where it doesn't belong. If you are donating your equipment to a reuse organization, ask if equipment is tested before it is passed on for donation and if the company only ships working equipment. Ask who their recipient organizations are. If the answer to any of these questions is, "We don't know," or, "We can't tell you," it may be time to send your equipment elsewhere.
One of the easiest options is to use your computer manufacturer's recycling program, though most major manufacturers charge fees and require you to do the packing and shipping. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a good guide to responsible recycling, finds many of the manufacture take-back programs wanting and publishes a report card on the environmental effectiveness of most of them.
The Rethink Program, hosted by eBay has a good computer recycling FAQ section and many useful links to recyclers, as do CompuMentor's Tech Soup site and the EPA's eCycling website. Be aware, though, that the recyclers listed on these sites have not been vetted or approved by these organizations in any way. The Basel Action Network also carries a list of electronics recyclers that have signed their stewardship pledge, under which recyclers agree not to export e-waste or add it to landfill, or use prison labor, and to document where equipment, parts and materials go.
If your machine still functions (and not just as a paperweight), then seeing that it is reused is perhaps the best option. Companies like RetroBox and FreeGeek build computers out of salvaged parts; the latter has a list of like-minded organizations that can be a good starting place for recycling or reusing your machine. For a more complete list of NGOs, government agencies and manufacturers who recycle, check out the article at ::Salon.
Three Quarters of Americans Support Investment in Clean Energy
Written by Timothy B. Hurst
Throughout his campaign, though more fervently towards the end of it, Barack Obama made it clear that investing in renewable energy and focusing on building a new energy economy would be a centerpiece of his agenda should he have won. And now that he has, the results of a new Zogby poll suggest he’s got the public mandate to do it.
According to the post-election survey, 78% believe investing in clean energy is important to revitalizing America’s economy. Of those, 50% said they strongly agree clean energy investment is vital to the nation’s economic future.
Support for clean energy investment is particularly strong among younger voters - 87% of those age 18-24 and 80% of those age 18-29 believe this type of investment is necessary to help improve the U.S. economy. While the vast majority of Democrats (96%) and independent voters (77%) view clean energy investment as a key means to boost the U.S. economy, more than half of Republican voters (58%) also said the same.
The results also indicate that most voters want their elected officials to focus on global warming - 61% said they agree their elected officials should make combating global warming a high priority, an increase from 58% of voters who said the same in 2006.
Some of the most striking findings were that the desire for a greater political emphasis on global warming has increased 10% among African American voters from 78% in 2006 and to 73% among Hispanic voters from 64% two years ago.
The results of this poll suggest the political calculus has changed somewhat. Pollster John Zogby says that clean energy has emerged as part of voter expectations for getting the economy back on track. “Support for action on global warming, already strong in the 2006 election, was even stronger in 2008, particularly among young voters that are the future electorate,” he said.
Throughout his campaign, though more fervently towards the end of it, Barack Obama made it clear that investing in renewable energy and focusing on building a new energy economy would be a centerpiece of his agenda should he have won. And now that he has, the results of a new Zogby poll suggest he’s got the public mandate to do it.
According to the post-election survey, 78% believe investing in clean energy is important to revitalizing America’s economy. Of those, 50% said they strongly agree clean energy investment is vital to the nation’s economic future.
Support for clean energy investment is particularly strong among younger voters - 87% of those age 18-24 and 80% of those age 18-29 believe this type of investment is necessary to help improve the U.S. economy. While the vast majority of Democrats (96%) and independent voters (77%) view clean energy investment as a key means to boost the U.S. economy, more than half of Republican voters (58%) also said the same.
The results also indicate that most voters want their elected officials to focus on global warming - 61% said they agree their elected officials should make combating global warming a high priority, an increase from 58% of voters who said the same in 2006.
Some of the most striking findings were that the desire for a greater political emphasis on global warming has increased 10% among African American voters from 78% in 2006 and to 73% among Hispanic voters from 64% two years ago.
The results of this poll suggest the political calculus has changed somewhat. Pollster John Zogby says that clean energy has emerged as part of voter expectations for getting the economy back on track. “Support for action on global warming, already strong in the 2006 election, was even stronger in 2008, particularly among young voters that are the future electorate,” he said.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
7 Executive Orders President Obama Should Sign to Protect the Environment
At the time of this writing, Barack Obama has been president-elect for less than a week and no one is wasting any time in making suggestions for actions he should take once he’s President Obama. The Center for Progressive Reform passed on their suggestions for 7 Executive Orders for the President’s First 100 Days and so I pass them on to you to debate, discuss and otherwise armchair analyze.
They cover a range of perennial issues familiar to TreeHugger readers—Climate change, chemicals in products intended for children, pollution, preserving ecosystems on public lands. Here they are:
1. Reduce the Federal Carbon Footprint
The new President should issue an Executive Order requiring each federal agency to measure, report, and reduce its carbon footprint. Not only would the Executive Order have a meaningful impact on the federal government's carbon emissions, it could also lead to the creation of uniform, practical standards for measuring such footprints, standards that could be applied government-wide and beyond. Each of the provisions of this proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
2. Consider Climate Change in All Decisions
The next President should issue a new Executive Order clarifying that all federal agencies are obligated to consider the global climate change-related implications of their actions. This proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
3. Protect Children from Chemicals
The next President should amend Executive Order 13045 (issued initially by President
Clinton and then amended by President Bush) to mandate that agencies establish an affirmative agenda for protecting children from lead, mercury, perchlorate, phthalates, fine particulate matter, ozone, and pesticides; require the reform of risk assessment policy so that children are accounted for as a vulnerable group; and end the use of discounting the value of children's lives in cost-benefit analysis. As is the case with the provisions of the existing Order on Protecting Children, each of these recommendations is consistent with the goals of the various environmental, safety, and public health statutes.
4. Environmental Justice
The next President should amend or replace the original Executive Order [12898] on Environmental Justice. The new Order should require a meaningful analysis of the environmental justice impacts and implications of all major new rules; impose on agencies a substantive obligation to take affirmative steps to ameliorate environmental injustice; launch an affirmative Environmental Justice agenda; hold agencies accountable for carrying out their environmental justice obligations; and clarify key terms from the current Order, including “environmental justice communities” and “subsistence,” to avoid the kind of narrow interpretation of the terms applied by the Bush Administration. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Environmental Justice, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
5. Transparent Regulatory Review
The new President should issue an Executive Order restoring open government in three areas where unwarranted secrecy has developed. The Order should restore the presumption of disclosure concerning exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so that political appointees and career government employees cannot operate free of scrutiny; forbid agencies from taking advantage of loopholes that limit the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) so that the public can be assured that special interests do not have undue influence on agency decision making; and improve the transparency of regulatory review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA) so that efforts by political appointees in the White House to override the judgment of scientists and other experts in regulatory agencies can at least be transparent to the public. All of the proposed Order's provisions are consistent with the goals of FOIA and FACA.
6. Protect Stronger State Laws from Weaker Federal Ones
CPR points out that the Bush Administration often preempted stronger state laws on environmental regulation with weaker federal ones,
The next President should [...] should amend the existing Executive Order on Federalism to strengthen provisions setting forth a presumption against preemption; require agencies to provide a written justification for preemption; and require that, when a federal statute allows states to adopt more stringent standards or seek a waiver of statutory preemption (as in EPA's denial of California's Clean Air Act waiver), agencies must provide a written justification to the White House before denying the state's regulatory authority or waiver request. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Federalism, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of the various statutes under which the environmental, safety, and public health agencies operate, including the National Environmental Policy Act.
7. Promoting Ecological Integrity
The next President should issue a new Executive Order declaring a national policy of
promoting ecological integrity as a baseline requirement for sustainable public land use. The President should also revoke two Bush Administration Executive Orders issued in 2005 (Executive Orders 13211 and 13212) that made it easier to develop energy resources on public lands, even at the risk of causing long-term degradation of natural resource values. In addition, the President should amend a third Bush Order (Executive Order 13443) by providing equal opportunities for public participation in federal land use decision making to a wide variety of constituencies, in addition to those promoting hunting. All of these measures are consistent with the goals of the various public lands statutes.
They cover a range of perennial issues familiar to TreeHugger readers—Climate change, chemicals in products intended for children, pollution, preserving ecosystems on public lands. Here they are:
1. Reduce the Federal Carbon Footprint
The new President should issue an Executive Order requiring each federal agency to measure, report, and reduce its carbon footprint. Not only would the Executive Order have a meaningful impact on the federal government's carbon emissions, it could also lead to the creation of uniform, practical standards for measuring such footprints, standards that could be applied government-wide and beyond. Each of the provisions of this proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
2. Consider Climate Change in All Decisions
The next President should issue a new Executive Order clarifying that all federal agencies are obligated to consider the global climate change-related implications of their actions. This proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
3. Protect Children from Chemicals
The next President should amend Executive Order 13045 (issued initially by President
Clinton and then amended by President Bush) to mandate that agencies establish an affirmative agenda for protecting children from lead, mercury, perchlorate, phthalates, fine particulate matter, ozone, and pesticides; require the reform of risk assessment policy so that children are accounted for as a vulnerable group; and end the use of discounting the value of children's lives in cost-benefit analysis. As is the case with the provisions of the existing Order on Protecting Children, each of these recommendations is consistent with the goals of the various environmental, safety, and public health statutes.
4. Environmental Justice
The next President should amend or replace the original Executive Order [12898] on Environmental Justice. The new Order should require a meaningful analysis of the environmental justice impacts and implications of all major new rules; impose on agencies a substantive obligation to take affirmative steps to ameliorate environmental injustice; launch an affirmative Environmental Justice agenda; hold agencies accountable for carrying out their environmental justice obligations; and clarify key terms from the current Order, including “environmental justice communities” and “subsistence,” to avoid the kind of narrow interpretation of the terms applied by the Bush Administration. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Environmental Justice, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
5. Transparent Regulatory Review
The new President should issue an Executive Order restoring open government in three areas where unwarranted secrecy has developed. The Order should restore the presumption of disclosure concerning exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so that political appointees and career government employees cannot operate free of scrutiny; forbid agencies from taking advantage of loopholes that limit the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) so that the public can be assured that special interests do not have undue influence on agency decision making; and improve the transparency of regulatory review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA) so that efforts by political appointees in the White House to override the judgment of scientists and other experts in regulatory agencies can at least be transparent to the public. All of the proposed Order's provisions are consistent with the goals of FOIA and FACA.
6. Protect Stronger State Laws from Weaker Federal Ones
CPR points out that the Bush Administration often preempted stronger state laws on environmental regulation with weaker federal ones,
The next President should [...] should amend the existing Executive Order on Federalism to strengthen provisions setting forth a presumption against preemption; require agencies to provide a written justification for preemption; and require that, when a federal statute allows states to adopt more stringent standards or seek a waiver of statutory preemption (as in EPA's denial of California's Clean Air Act waiver), agencies must provide a written justification to the White House before denying the state's regulatory authority or waiver request. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Federalism, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of the various statutes under which the environmental, safety, and public health agencies operate, including the National Environmental Policy Act.
7. Promoting Ecological Integrity
The next President should issue a new Executive Order declaring a national policy of
promoting ecological integrity as a baseline requirement for sustainable public land use. The President should also revoke two Bush Administration Executive Orders issued in 2005 (Executive Orders 13211 and 13212) that made it easier to develop energy resources on public lands, even at the risk of causing long-term degradation of natural resource values. In addition, the President should amend a third Bush Order (Executive Order 13443) by providing equal opportunities for public participation in federal land use decision making to a wide variety of constituencies, in addition to those promoting hunting. All of these measures are consistent with the goals of the various public lands statutes.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
'60 Minutes' examines the business of e-waste recycling
In Sunday's 60 Minutes, the CBS TV news magazine examines the lucrative but shadowy business of mining e-waste--junked computers, televisions, and other old electronic products--for valuable components, including gold. However, often illegal and hazardous activity creates toxic pollution, which in turn leads to brain damage, kidney disease, cancers, and mutations. In the segment, correspondent Scott Pelley examines the ethics of the recycling industry. (For the full 60 Minutes segment, see "The Electronic Wasteland.")
In the first clip, Pelley takes a tour of Denver electronic waste recycling company GRX, a member of "E-Stewards." The stringent program is run by the Basel Action Network, a watchdog group that certifies ethical recyclers that do not ship their toxic materials overseas.
In the second clip, the 60 Minutes crew chronicles piles of electronics blanketing the Chinese countryside waiting to be recycled. E-waste workers in Guiyu, China, where Pelley's team videotaped, put up with the dangerous conditions for the $8 a day the job pays.
In the third clip, scientists discuss e-waste, the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide, and the impact it has on those whose lives depend on it. The toxic pollution from black market recycling leads to brain damage, kidney disease, cancers, and mutations.
In the fourth clip, Pelley and his crew are attacked and threatened with violence by area gangsters overseeing the e-waste operations who tried to take the CBS team's cameras. The smugglers were trying to protect the lucrative business of mining e-wasted. However, Pelley's crew managed to escape and bring back footage of the hazardous activities.
In the first clip, Pelley takes a tour of Denver electronic waste recycling company GRX, a member of "E-Stewards." The stringent program is run by the Basel Action Network, a watchdog group that certifies ethical recyclers that do not ship their toxic materials overseas.
In the second clip, the 60 Minutes crew chronicles piles of electronics blanketing the Chinese countryside waiting to be recycled. E-waste workers in Guiyu, China, where Pelley's team videotaped, put up with the dangerous conditions for the $8 a day the job pays.
In the third clip, scientists discuss e-waste, the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide, and the impact it has on those whose lives depend on it. The toxic pollution from black market recycling leads to brain damage, kidney disease, cancers, and mutations.
In the fourth clip, Pelley and his crew are attacked and threatened with violence by area gangsters overseeing the e-waste operations who tried to take the CBS team's cameras. The smugglers were trying to protect the lucrative business of mining e-wasted. However, Pelley's crew managed to escape and bring back footage of the hazardous activities.
Children become latest source of renewable energy
Have you ever watched little kids playing on a playground and thought: “If only I could harness their energy?” That’s precisely what a group of green-minded U.S. inventors have done by transforming playground equipment into systems that generate electricity.
According to Karen Cavanagh, CEO of Saber Technical, the New York-based designer and manufacturer of the electrical generating playground systems, the equipment is fitted with alternators and gears which, when activated, are able to generate an electrical charge.
If the children are spinning a merry-go-round that’s intended to pump well water, the spinning motion of the machine will send power into an alternator which then transfers an electric current directly to a sump pump. From there the sump pump pushes the water through underground pipes into a holding tank, which is mounted on top of a tower. The clean water can then be used for drinking, for sanitation purposes or for irrigating arid land.
The “kid made” electricity can also be stored in cells and backed up by solar powered generators which can then be tapped for interior and exterior lighting.
But how are the children taking to the high tech equipment?
“It’s kids,” says John Mason, one of Saber Tech’s founders. “They run fast enough they get the (generator) lights to flash. It gives them a visual reward.”
While several private schools in the U.S. are currently utilizing the Saber Tech donated “kid power playgrounds” to energize their facilities, sister projects are planned for India, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and possibly Afghanistan.
One project that’s slated for a school in Tanzania will literally change the lives of the 600-plus children who attend it. Presently the students of the Sinai School in Babati are forced to walk two miles everyday to access clean drinking water. They also conduct their studies in powerless classrooms that double as storerooms. After their new playground system is constructed, the children will not only enjoy pumped in clean drinking water, they’ll have enough stored electricity to power up their classrooms.
“They haven’t got running water at the school,” explains Clive Shiret of the Livingstone Tanzania Trust, a relief organization. “They haven’t got any sanitary facilities. So this will enable us to do some great work with making the whole place more hygienic and basically extending the kids’ lives.”
According to one teacher from the Woodland Hills Montessori School in upstate New York, where an electrical generating playground is already in operation, it’s all about the basics: “We’re trying to get the children involved in the project, and where do you start but with the fundamental needs. You start with water because it’s a basic component of life.”
But should the Parent Teacher Association start looking at the world's kids like caged hamsters running inside a power-generating hamster wheel?
“It’s all about bottling their energy,” says a cautious Cavanagh. “But most of all I want these kids to know that it is their energy that will solve problems. The system they play on every single day is the same system that the same type of kids use across the globe.”
Parents seem to be in agreement, says Kris Gernert-Dott, mother of 5th and 7th grade students at the Montessori School: “Through this water and energy project ... my daughters have been moved to think of ways they can help make the world a better place.”
Of course, like any benign energy producing project there always remains the risk of free-market exploitation. But in the case of supervised kid-generated playgrounds, such a possibility seems highly unlikely. One New York building contractor, David Canfield, who worked on assembling the Montessori playground, said: “This is an opportunity for kids all over the globe to share something in common. The playground works on many levels including scientific, ecological and cultural. Of course if somebody starts using kids and playgrounds to mine diamonds that would be all wrong.”
But what’s good about kid-powered playgrounds is that they not only provide access to human basics like water and electric light, they are able to bridge the world’s cultural gap.
According to Karen Cavanagh, CEO of Saber Technical, the New York-based designer and manufacturer of the electrical generating playground systems, the equipment is fitted with alternators and gears which, when activated, are able to generate an electrical charge.
If the children are spinning a merry-go-round that’s intended to pump well water, the spinning motion of the machine will send power into an alternator which then transfers an electric current directly to a sump pump. From there the sump pump pushes the water through underground pipes into a holding tank, which is mounted on top of a tower. The clean water can then be used for drinking, for sanitation purposes or for irrigating arid land.
The “kid made” electricity can also be stored in cells and backed up by solar powered generators which can then be tapped for interior and exterior lighting.
But how are the children taking to the high tech equipment?
“It’s kids,” says John Mason, one of Saber Tech’s founders. “They run fast enough they get the (generator) lights to flash. It gives them a visual reward.”
While several private schools in the U.S. are currently utilizing the Saber Tech donated “kid power playgrounds” to energize their facilities, sister projects are planned for India, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and possibly Afghanistan.
One project that’s slated for a school in Tanzania will literally change the lives of the 600-plus children who attend it. Presently the students of the Sinai School in Babati are forced to walk two miles everyday to access clean drinking water. They also conduct their studies in powerless classrooms that double as storerooms. After their new playground system is constructed, the children will not only enjoy pumped in clean drinking water, they’ll have enough stored electricity to power up their classrooms.
“They haven’t got running water at the school,” explains Clive Shiret of the Livingstone Tanzania Trust, a relief organization. “They haven’t got any sanitary facilities. So this will enable us to do some great work with making the whole place more hygienic and basically extending the kids’ lives.”
According to one teacher from the Woodland Hills Montessori School in upstate New York, where an electrical generating playground is already in operation, it’s all about the basics: “We’re trying to get the children involved in the project, and where do you start but with the fundamental needs. You start with water because it’s a basic component of life.”
But should the Parent Teacher Association start looking at the world's kids like caged hamsters running inside a power-generating hamster wheel?
“It’s all about bottling their energy,” says a cautious Cavanagh. “But most of all I want these kids to know that it is their energy that will solve problems. The system they play on every single day is the same system that the same type of kids use across the globe.”
Parents seem to be in agreement, says Kris Gernert-Dott, mother of 5th and 7th grade students at the Montessori School: “Through this water and energy project ... my daughters have been moved to think of ways they can help make the world a better place.”
Of course, like any benign energy producing project there always remains the risk of free-market exploitation. But in the case of supervised kid-generated playgrounds, such a possibility seems highly unlikely. One New York building contractor, David Canfield, who worked on assembling the Montessori playground, said: “This is an opportunity for kids all over the globe to share something in common. The playground works on many levels including scientific, ecological and cultural. Of course if somebody starts using kids and playgrounds to mine diamonds that would be all wrong.”
But what’s good about kid-powered playgrounds is that they not only provide access to human basics like water and electric light, they are able to bridge the world’s cultural gap.
Children become latest source of renewable energy
Have you ever watched little kids playing on a playground and thought: “If only I could harness their energy?” That’s precisely what a group of green-minded U.S. inventors have done by transforming playground equipment into systems that generate electricity.
According to Karen Cavanagh, CEO of Saber Technical, the New York-based designer and manufacturer of the electrical generating playground systems, the equipment is fitted with alternators and gears which, when activated, are able to generate an electrical charge.
If the children are spinning a merry-go-round that’s intended to pump well water, the spinning motion of the machine will send power into an alternator which then transfers an electric current directly to a sump pump. From there the sump pump pushes the water through underground pipes into a holding tank, which is mounted on top of a tower. The clean water can then be used for drinking, for sanitation purposes or for irrigating arid land.
The “kid made” electricity can also be stored in cells and backed up by solar powered generators which can then be tapped for interior and exterior lighting.
But how are the children taking to the high tech equipment?
“It’s kids,” says John Mason, one of Saber Tech’s founders. “They run fast enough they get the (generator) lights to flash. It gives them a visual reward.”
While several private schools in the U.S. are currently utilizing the Saber Tech donated “kid power playgrounds” to energize their facilities, sister projects are planned for India, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and possibly Afghanistan.
One project that’s slated for a school in Tanzania will literally change the lives of the 600-plus children who attend it. Presently the students of the Sinai School in Babati are forced to walk two miles everyday to access clean drinking water. They also conduct their studies in powerless classrooms that double as storerooms. After their new playground system is constructed, the children will not only enjoy pumped in clean drinking water, they’ll have enough stored electricity to power up their classrooms.
“They haven’t got running water at the school,” explains Clive Shiret of the Livingstone Tanzania Trust, a relief organization. “They haven’t got any sanitary facilities. So this will enable us to do some great work with making the whole place more hygienic and basically extending the kids’ lives.”
According to one teacher from the Woodland Hills Montessori School in upstate New York, where an electrical generating playground is already in operation, it’s all about the basics: “We’re trying to get the children involved in the project, and where do you start but with the fundamental needs. You start with water because it’s a basic component of life.”
But should the Parent Teacher Association start looking at the world's kids like caged hamsters running inside a power-generating hamster wheel?
“It’s all about bottling their energy,” says a cautious Cavanagh. “But most of all I want these kids to know that it is their energy that will solve problems. The system they play on every single day is the same system that the same type of kids use across the globe.”
Parents seem to be in agreement, says Kris Gernert-Dott, mother of 5th and 7th grade students at the Montessori School: “Through this water and energy project ... my daughters have been moved to think of ways they can help make the world a better place.”
Of course, like any benign energy producing project there always remains the risk of free-market exploitation. But in the case of supervised kid-generated playgrounds, such a possibility seems highly unlikely. One New York building contractor, David Canfield, who worked on assembling the Montessori playground, said: “This is an opportunity for kids all over the globe to share something in common. The playground works on many levels including scientific, ecological and cultural. Of course if somebody starts using kids and playgrounds to mine diamonds that would be all wrong.”
But what’s good about kid-powered playgrounds is that they not only provide access to human basics like water and electric light, they are able to bridge the world’s cultural gap.
According to Karen Cavanagh, CEO of Saber Technical, the New York-based designer and manufacturer of the electrical generating playground systems, the equipment is fitted with alternators and gears which, when activated, are able to generate an electrical charge.
If the children are spinning a merry-go-round that’s intended to pump well water, the spinning motion of the machine will send power into an alternator which then transfers an electric current directly to a sump pump. From there the sump pump pushes the water through underground pipes into a holding tank, which is mounted on top of a tower. The clean water can then be used for drinking, for sanitation purposes or for irrigating arid land.
The “kid made” electricity can also be stored in cells and backed up by solar powered generators which can then be tapped for interior and exterior lighting.
But how are the children taking to the high tech equipment?
“It’s kids,” says John Mason, one of Saber Tech’s founders. “They run fast enough they get the (generator) lights to flash. It gives them a visual reward.”
While several private schools in the U.S. are currently utilizing the Saber Tech donated “kid power playgrounds” to energize their facilities, sister projects are planned for India, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and possibly Afghanistan.
One project that’s slated for a school in Tanzania will literally change the lives of the 600-plus children who attend it. Presently the students of the Sinai School in Babati are forced to walk two miles everyday to access clean drinking water. They also conduct their studies in powerless classrooms that double as storerooms. After their new playground system is constructed, the children will not only enjoy pumped in clean drinking water, they’ll have enough stored electricity to power up their classrooms.
“They haven’t got running water at the school,” explains Clive Shiret of the Livingstone Tanzania Trust, a relief organization. “They haven’t got any sanitary facilities. So this will enable us to do some great work with making the whole place more hygienic and basically extending the kids’ lives.”
According to one teacher from the Woodland Hills Montessori School in upstate New York, where an electrical generating playground is already in operation, it’s all about the basics: “We’re trying to get the children involved in the project, and where do you start but with the fundamental needs. You start with water because it’s a basic component of life.”
But should the Parent Teacher Association start looking at the world's kids like caged hamsters running inside a power-generating hamster wheel?
“It’s all about bottling their energy,” says a cautious Cavanagh. “But most of all I want these kids to know that it is their energy that will solve problems. The system they play on every single day is the same system that the same type of kids use across the globe.”
Parents seem to be in agreement, says Kris Gernert-Dott, mother of 5th and 7th grade students at the Montessori School: “Through this water and energy project ... my daughters have been moved to think of ways they can help make the world a better place.”
Of course, like any benign energy producing project there always remains the risk of free-market exploitation. But in the case of supervised kid-generated playgrounds, such a possibility seems highly unlikely. One New York building contractor, David Canfield, who worked on assembling the Montessori playground, said: “This is an opportunity for kids all over the globe to share something in common. The playground works on many levels including scientific, ecological and cultural. Of course if somebody starts using kids and playgrounds to mine diamonds that would be all wrong.”
But what’s good about kid-powered playgrounds is that they not only provide access to human basics like water and electric light, they are able to bridge the world’s cultural gap.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Recycling Myths: PM Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling
Is chucking a soda can in the trash an unforgivable sin? That depends who you ask: You'll find plenty of people on both sides of the great recycling debate, each equally convinced the other side is ill-informed. The truth is that opponents and proponents alike often rely on facts that are outdated, oversimplified or simply untrue. We tackle five of the biggest myths about recycling. For more, check out the December issue of Popular Mechanics.
By Alex Hutchinson
1. We have to recycle because we're running out of landfill space.
That was the rallying cry for recycling advocates back in the 1980s, when the Mobro 4000 garbage barge wandered up and down the East Coast searching for a place to dump its moldering load. It's a bit of a red herring, though. After all, we have pretty much unlimited space to dump garbage—if we're willing. In practice, for every town that refuses permission to build a landfill, there's often another town eager for the revenues that a landfill site can bring.
According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA), the United States has about 20 years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills. There are, however, places where space is getting tight: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all have less than five years capacity, and the northeastern part of the country in general has the least available landfill space.
These regional variations point to a different motivation for the "recycle to save landfill space" argument. The average tipping fee at landfills in the Northeast region, according to the most recent NSWMA figures, is over $70 a ton, compared to a national average of just $34. In other words, even if the scarcity of landfill space turns out not to be a strong environmental argument for recycling, there can be powerful economic incentives to reduce landfill intake.
2. The trucks that collect recycling burn more energy and produce more pollution than recycling saves.
Collecting recyclables isn't cheap—it eats up about 50 to 60 percent of the budget of a typical curbside recycling program, according to Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. And the trucks burn gas and emit pollution as they go. That said, "You're going to collect waste one way or another," points out Jeff Morris, a Washington-based environmental consultant. A recycling program should allow garbage collection to become less frequent (or to use fewer trucks), offsetting the cost and energy involved. Plus, new truck designs can collect both recycling and garbage (at different times), avoiding the huge capital expense of an extra fleet. They can also self-dump specially designed bins, saving time and manpower.
But all that turns out to be pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether recycling makes environmental sense. Scientists have conducted hundreds of "life-cycle analyses" to compare recycling with other options like landfill and incineration, following the entire chain of events from the manufacture of a product (using either virgin or recycled materials) to its disposal. The dominant factor in virtually every case is the enormous amount of energy required to turn raw materials into metals and plastics compared to the energy needed to reprocess products that already exist.
A study by Morris found that it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. In contrast, the total energy for collecting, hauling and processing a ton of recyclables adds up to just 0.9 million Btu. The bottom line: We don't need to worry that recycling trucks are doing more harm than good.
3. Thanks to the sky-high prices of raw materials, cities are getting rich by selling recyclables.
In the past year, prices for almost every kind of recyclable have hit record highs, sparking a frenzy of activity in the recycling industry. "If you're wondering where all the used-car salesmen have gone, they're rushing into recycling," says Jerry Powell, an industry veteran who edits Resource Recycling magazine. That translates to profits for many players—in fact, Powell says, "if you can't make money in recycling right now, you should get out of the business."
Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean that your local city council is getting a cut of the action. "Some cities are still locked in unfavorable long-term contracts and paying tipping fees," says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Council. That means that these cities have to pay to collect and sort their curbside recycling—and then pay someone to take away these now-valuable materials instead of being paid for them.
Given how much the price of recyclables has fluctuated in the past, these contracts made sense for cities when they were signed: Locking in costs allows municipalities to budget properly. But now, global contracts ensure a large fraction of U.S. recycling ships to China, so the recycling market has less volatility as well as higher prices. As municipal recycling contracts come up for renewal, cities like Chicago are finally able to turn their piles of cans, bottles and newspapers into a stable revenue stream.
CONTINUED: Is Your Recycling Sorted by Hand? >>>
By Alex Hutchinson
1. We have to recycle because we're running out of landfill space.
That was the rallying cry for recycling advocates back in the 1980s, when the Mobro 4000 garbage barge wandered up and down the East Coast searching for a place to dump its moldering load. It's a bit of a red herring, though. After all, we have pretty much unlimited space to dump garbage—if we're willing. In practice, for every town that refuses permission to build a landfill, there's often another town eager for the revenues that a landfill site can bring.
According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA), the United States has about 20 years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills. There are, however, places where space is getting tight: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all have less than five years capacity, and the northeastern part of the country in general has the least available landfill space.
These regional variations point to a different motivation for the "recycle to save landfill space" argument. The average tipping fee at landfills in the Northeast region, according to the most recent NSWMA figures, is over $70 a ton, compared to a national average of just $34. In other words, even if the scarcity of landfill space turns out not to be a strong environmental argument for recycling, there can be powerful economic incentives to reduce landfill intake.
2. The trucks that collect recycling burn more energy and produce more pollution than recycling saves.
Collecting recyclables isn't cheap—it eats up about 50 to 60 percent of the budget of a typical curbside recycling program, according to Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. And the trucks burn gas and emit pollution as they go. That said, "You're going to collect waste one way or another," points out Jeff Morris, a Washington-based environmental consultant. A recycling program should allow garbage collection to become less frequent (or to use fewer trucks), offsetting the cost and energy involved. Plus, new truck designs can collect both recycling and garbage (at different times), avoiding the huge capital expense of an extra fleet. They can also self-dump specially designed bins, saving time and manpower.
But all that turns out to be pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether recycling makes environmental sense. Scientists have conducted hundreds of "life-cycle analyses" to compare recycling with other options like landfill and incineration, following the entire chain of events from the manufacture of a product (using either virgin or recycled materials) to its disposal. The dominant factor in virtually every case is the enormous amount of energy required to turn raw materials into metals and plastics compared to the energy needed to reprocess products that already exist.
A study by Morris found that it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. In contrast, the total energy for collecting, hauling and processing a ton of recyclables adds up to just 0.9 million Btu. The bottom line: We don't need to worry that recycling trucks are doing more harm than good.
3. Thanks to the sky-high prices of raw materials, cities are getting rich by selling recyclables.
In the past year, prices for almost every kind of recyclable have hit record highs, sparking a frenzy of activity in the recycling industry. "If you're wondering where all the used-car salesmen have gone, they're rushing into recycling," says Jerry Powell, an industry veteran who edits Resource Recycling magazine. That translates to profits for many players—in fact, Powell says, "if you can't make money in recycling right now, you should get out of the business."
Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean that your local city council is getting a cut of the action. "Some cities are still locked in unfavorable long-term contracts and paying tipping fees," says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Council. That means that these cities have to pay to collect and sort their curbside recycling—and then pay someone to take away these now-valuable materials instead of being paid for them.
Given how much the price of recyclables has fluctuated in the past, these contracts made sense for cities when they were signed: Locking in costs allows municipalities to budget properly. But now, global contracts ensure a large fraction of U.S. recycling ships to China, so the recycling market has less volatility as well as higher prices. As municipal recycling contracts come up for renewal, cities like Chicago are finally able to turn their piles of cans, bottles and newspapers into a stable revenue stream.
CONTINUED: Is Your Recycling Sorted by Hand? >>>
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Mini nuclear plants
....... to power 20,000 homes£13m shed-size reactors will be delivered by lorryJohn Vidal and Nick Rosen guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008 Article historyNuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'
Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.
The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. 'We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.'
The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. 'They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,' said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. 'We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.'
The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.
'You could never have a Chernobyl-type event - there are no moving parts,' said Deal. 'You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it's too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.'
Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'
Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.
The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. 'We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.'
The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. 'They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,' said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. 'We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.'
The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.
'You could never have a Chernobyl-type event - there are no moving parts,' said Deal. 'You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it's too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.'
Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.
A new fiber-optic laser system can measure wind speed and direction up to 1000 meters in front of a wind turbine, giving the massive machines enough precious seconds to proactively adapt to gusts and sudden changes in wind direction. The device, developed by Catch the Wind, a startup based in Manassas, VA, could improve the efficiency of wind turbines and keep them from breaking down.
The device could help lower the cost of renewable electricity from wind. Wind turbines lose roughly 1 percent of their operating efficiency for every degree their blades are out of alignment with the oncoming wind. Catch the Wind claims that its laser system can boost turbine power output by 10 percent by improving orientation accuracy. The pitch of the blades can also be adjusted in advance of the wind to reduce wear and tear on turbine gearbox components and blades, lowering repair and maintenance costs by up to 10 percent and extending the operating life of a wind farm, the company says.
John Kourtoff, chief executive officer of offshore wind developer Trillium Power, calls Catch the Wind's approach "conceptually intriguing" if it can both reduce wind-farm costs and increase revenues. "On the face of it, it makes sense. It would be advantageous for us," he says. "But I'd have to see real field data."
Current wind-energy measurement systems--both mechanical anemometers and more advanced LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) devices--are used primarily to determine if a location is suitable for a wind farm. The systems are also kept as part of on-site weather stations used for longer-term wind forecasting. Real-time data can also be gathered by mounting a small anemometer on the back of a turbine's nacelle, Kourtoff says. The problem with this setup is that the air is so disturbed after passing by the turbine blades that measurements are often skewed and unreliable. Also, the turbine can only respond to wind changes after its blades have been hit, leaving them vulnerable for a few seconds to a range of punishing forces caused by wind shear, gusts, and turbulence.
The device could help lower the cost of renewable electricity from wind. Wind turbines lose roughly 1 percent of their operating efficiency for every degree their blades are out of alignment with the oncoming wind. Catch the Wind claims that its laser system can boost turbine power output by 10 percent by improving orientation accuracy. The pitch of the blades can also be adjusted in advance of the wind to reduce wear and tear on turbine gearbox components and blades, lowering repair and maintenance costs by up to 10 percent and extending the operating life of a wind farm, the company says.
John Kourtoff, chief executive officer of offshore wind developer Trillium Power, calls Catch the Wind's approach "conceptually intriguing" if it can both reduce wind-farm costs and increase revenues. "On the face of it, it makes sense. It would be advantageous for us," he says. "But I'd have to see real field data."
Current wind-energy measurement systems--both mechanical anemometers and more advanced LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) devices--are used primarily to determine if a location is suitable for a wind farm. The systems are also kept as part of on-site weather stations used for longer-term wind forecasting. Real-time data can also be gathered by mounting a small anemometer on the back of a turbine's nacelle, Kourtoff says. The problem with this setup is that the air is so disturbed after passing by the turbine blades that measurements are often skewed and unreliable. Also, the turbine can only respond to wind changes after its blades have been hit, leaving them vulnerable for a few seconds to a range of punishing forces caused by wind shear, gusts, and turbulence.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Are We Doing Enough to Protect the Ozone Layer?
The gaping upper atmospheric hole over the Antarctic, famously known as the "ozone hole" may be able to repair itself in about half a century or so, but some experts say it’s still fragile and needs our attention. The ozone layer protects us from ultraviolet-B radiation from the Sun, which causes skin cancers and other harmful conditions. As a thinning ozone layer increases ultra-violet radiation, wildlife feels the negative impact, as well.
Important as it is, we’re simply not doing enough to safeguard the ozone layer, or at least according to one of the scientists who first discovered the big hole over Antarctica.
Dr. Joe Farman was one of three British Antarctic Survey scientists who first reported signs of severe damage to the ozone layer in 1985. He is now openly criticizing the agreement that allows developing countries to keep on using ozone-depleting chemicals until 2040, and other policies that he says are counter-productive.
"Frequent reviews rescued the Montreal Protocol from deficiencies in the original draft, and another comprehensive re-examination is clearly needed," Farman has stated.
The Montreal Protocol regulating these substances is 20 years old this week. Member countries of the Montreal Protocol are meeting soon to review progress. Farman says that we need a much faster phase-out of ozone-destroying chemicals, and for the safe destruction of current stockpiles. Senior figures in the UN, as well as European and US politicians, are starting to listen.
The 1987 Montreal Protocol was designed to phase out chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons which were found to be depleting the ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere. Industrialized nations phased out almost all CFC production in 1995, with developing countries having a deadline of 2010.
Many of the substances, used in applications such as refrigeration, aerosols and fire-fighting, have been replaced with related families of chemicals including hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). These chemicals are less destructive to the ozone layer, but because production in the developing world is now increasing rapidly, there is renewed concern about their impact.
Current regulations mean that in 2015, developing countries will have to freeze their HCFC use at or below the level it is then, phasing out entirely by 2040.
"The rate of HCFC use is skyrocketing," noted Clare Perry, senior ozone campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). "So it's actually going to cost less to phase it out sooner when investment in plant and equipment is at a lower level."
French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said the EU will be push for a faster phase-out at this week's ozone treaty meeting.
"The schedule for eliminating HCFCs must be pushed up by 10 years - that will be the benchmark for deciding if the negotiations are successful," she said.
Accelerating the phase-out would require new funds from the industrialized world, as well as changes to the current funding regulations. Farman also recommends that cash be set aside to combat leakage of ozone-depleting chemicals, such as the fire retardant halon 1301, from developing world installations.
"There is some production in developing countries," he writes, "but the main source is now through leaks from existing installations, and during recycling. It is surely time to consider collecting the existing stockpile, and destroying it.
Important as it is, we’re simply not doing enough to safeguard the ozone layer, or at least according to one of the scientists who first discovered the big hole over Antarctica.
Dr. Joe Farman was one of three British Antarctic Survey scientists who first reported signs of severe damage to the ozone layer in 1985. He is now openly criticizing the agreement that allows developing countries to keep on using ozone-depleting chemicals until 2040, and other policies that he says are counter-productive.
"Frequent reviews rescued the Montreal Protocol from deficiencies in the original draft, and another comprehensive re-examination is clearly needed," Farman has stated.
The Montreal Protocol regulating these substances is 20 years old this week. Member countries of the Montreal Protocol are meeting soon to review progress. Farman says that we need a much faster phase-out of ozone-destroying chemicals, and for the safe destruction of current stockpiles. Senior figures in the UN, as well as European and US politicians, are starting to listen.
The 1987 Montreal Protocol was designed to phase out chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons which were found to be depleting the ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere. Industrialized nations phased out almost all CFC production in 1995, with developing countries having a deadline of 2010.
Many of the substances, used in applications such as refrigeration, aerosols and fire-fighting, have been replaced with related families of chemicals including hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). These chemicals are less destructive to the ozone layer, but because production in the developing world is now increasing rapidly, there is renewed concern about their impact.
Current regulations mean that in 2015, developing countries will have to freeze their HCFC use at or below the level it is then, phasing out entirely by 2040.
"The rate of HCFC use is skyrocketing," noted Clare Perry, senior ozone campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). "So it's actually going to cost less to phase it out sooner when investment in plant and equipment is at a lower level."
French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said the EU will be push for a faster phase-out at this week's ozone treaty meeting.
"The schedule for eliminating HCFCs must be pushed up by 10 years - that will be the benchmark for deciding if the negotiations are successful," she said.
Accelerating the phase-out would require new funds from the industrialized world, as well as changes to the current funding regulations. Farman also recommends that cash be set aside to combat leakage of ozone-depleting chemicals, such as the fire retardant halon 1301, from developing world installations.
"There is some production in developing countries," he writes, "but the main source is now through leaks from existing installations, and during recycling. It is surely time to consider collecting the existing stockpile, and destroying it.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Mixed Bag for State Environmental Ballot Initiatives
I seemed to have overlooked an important constitutional amendment passed in Minnesota that established a funding mechanism for conservation programs. My apologies to our friends in the North Star State. See comments for more.]For many Americans, participatory democracy means choosing between the people who will choose for you. But for voters in 36 states, electoral democracy exists beyond the parameters of representative government. In the states where the tools of direct democracy like referendums and ballot initiatives are employed, preferences of voters are gauged directly on amendments to state constitutions, specific policy questions, budgeting issues and more. Of the 153 measures at stake across the country in yesterday’s election, about a dozen dealt with energy and the environment. Below are the results and analysis of eight of the more notable measures (in no particular order):
Missouri Proposition C: Yes - Passing with a robust 64% of voters in favor, Proposition C will require investor-owned electric utilities to generate or purchase 2 percent of their electricity renewable and clean energy sources like wind, solar, landfill gas, biomass, and small hydroelectric projects by 2011 and 15% of their electricity from. Supporters of the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) initiative, Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, pointed out that 86% of Missouri’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. The passage of proposition C made Missouri the 27th state to pass a renewable energy standard.
Colorado Referendum 58: No - Strongly supported by Governor Ritter, the referendum would have repealed the $300-plus million tax credit oil and gas companies get for extracting mineral resources from the state. The revenue would have funded college scholarships and renewable energy programs.
Colorado Referendum 52: No - Referendum was competed with and would have superceded 58 had they both passed. constitutional proposal that would have funneled millions of dollars from severance taxes into transportation projects — suggested they might return it to the ballot as a statutory amendment, which would erase a major stumbling block. 52 and 58 faced some very well-funded opposition in the form of $12 million worth of industry attack ads that portrayed the measures as “a tax on us.” The oil and gas industry was able to overwhelm counterclaims that it would be very hard for the industry to simply pass on the tax when oil and natural gas are sold in global markets based on supply and demand.
Florida Amendment 4: Yes - Approved by a margin of 68%-32%, the amendment provides a property tax exemption for perpetual conservation easements or other perpetual conservation protections. Conservation easements allow the development rights of a parcel of land to be separated from the title and put into permanent conservation and provide a tax benefit for it. The conservation mechanism has been successful throughout the U.S., though there have been cases where the tax benefit has been abused.
Washington Proposition 1: Still undecided - A regional transit proposal that would extend light rail service from downtown Seattle into the surrounding suburbs was headed for passage behind solid support in Seattle’s King County.
Ohio Issue 2: Yes - With 69% voting in favor and 31% voting against, Ohio’s Issue 2 was a clear favorite. The measure authorizes the state to borrow $400 million for environmental conservation, preservation and revitalization purposes. The amendment is identical to the bond issue passed by the voters in 2000 and will add funding for The Clean Ohio Program.
California Proposition 1A: Yes - Voters on Tuesday approved the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act by a margin of 52 percent to 47 percent. The proposition permits the selling of about $10 billion in state bonds to fund the planning for a system of high-speed rail linking San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.
California Proposition 2: Yes - Proposition 2 creates a new state statute that prohibits the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs. The proposition passed by a robust 63%-37% majority despite strong opposition was from industry groups (’big ag’ if you will) that argued the measure would drive up the cost of food, specifically eggs.
California Proposition 7: No - The Clean and Solar Energy Act of 2008 would have increased the renewable energy portfolio standard for utilities including government-owned utilities to 20% by 2010. It also would have ratcheted up that standard for all utilities to 40% by 2020 and to 50% by 2025. Leading the opposition were two utility companies, PG&E and California Edison that argued the proposal was poorly written and so complicated that it could hurt the cause of renewable energy in the state. The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the state’s Republican, Democratic and Green parties said the measure would actually hurt the growth of renewables in the state.
California Proposition 10: No - Called for the state to raise $5 billion in bonds to fund rebates for the purchase and retrofitting of vehicles to run on alternative fuels including natural gas. 60% of Californians voted against the measure despite the more than $17 million spent to promote the measure. Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens was a chief supporter of the proposition and is a board member of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the company which sells natural gas as transportation fuel.
Missouri Proposition C: Yes - Passing with a robust 64% of voters in favor, Proposition C will require investor-owned electric utilities to generate or purchase 2 percent of their electricity renewable and clean energy sources like wind, solar, landfill gas, biomass, and small hydroelectric projects by 2011 and 15% of their electricity from. Supporters of the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) initiative, Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, pointed out that 86% of Missouri’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. The passage of proposition C made Missouri the 27th state to pass a renewable energy standard.
Colorado Referendum 58: No - Strongly supported by Governor Ritter, the referendum would have repealed the $300-plus million tax credit oil and gas companies get for extracting mineral resources from the state. The revenue would have funded college scholarships and renewable energy programs.
Colorado Referendum 52: No - Referendum was competed with and would have superceded 58 had they both passed. constitutional proposal that would have funneled millions of dollars from severance taxes into transportation projects — suggested they might return it to the ballot as a statutory amendment, which would erase a major stumbling block. 52 and 58 faced some very well-funded opposition in the form of $12 million worth of industry attack ads that portrayed the measures as “a tax on us.” The oil and gas industry was able to overwhelm counterclaims that it would be very hard for the industry to simply pass on the tax when oil and natural gas are sold in global markets based on supply and demand.
Florida Amendment 4: Yes - Approved by a margin of 68%-32%, the amendment provides a property tax exemption for perpetual conservation easements or other perpetual conservation protections. Conservation easements allow the development rights of a parcel of land to be separated from the title and put into permanent conservation and provide a tax benefit for it. The conservation mechanism has been successful throughout the U.S., though there have been cases where the tax benefit has been abused.
Washington Proposition 1: Still undecided - A regional transit proposal that would extend light rail service from downtown Seattle into the surrounding suburbs was headed for passage behind solid support in Seattle’s King County.
Ohio Issue 2: Yes - With 69% voting in favor and 31% voting against, Ohio’s Issue 2 was a clear favorite. The measure authorizes the state to borrow $400 million for environmental conservation, preservation and revitalization purposes. The amendment is identical to the bond issue passed by the voters in 2000 and will add funding for The Clean Ohio Program.
California Proposition 1A: Yes - Voters on Tuesday approved the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act by a margin of 52 percent to 47 percent. The proposition permits the selling of about $10 billion in state bonds to fund the planning for a system of high-speed rail linking San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.
California Proposition 2: Yes - Proposition 2 creates a new state statute that prohibits the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs. The proposition passed by a robust 63%-37% majority despite strong opposition was from industry groups (’big ag’ if you will) that argued the measure would drive up the cost of food, specifically eggs.
California Proposition 7: No - The Clean and Solar Energy Act of 2008 would have increased the renewable energy portfolio standard for utilities including government-owned utilities to 20% by 2010. It also would have ratcheted up that standard for all utilities to 40% by 2020 and to 50% by 2025. Leading the opposition were two utility companies, PG&E and California Edison that argued the proposal was poorly written and so complicated that it could hurt the cause of renewable energy in the state. The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the state’s Republican, Democratic and Green parties said the measure would actually hurt the growth of renewables in the state.
California Proposition 10: No - Called for the state to raise $5 billion in bonds to fund rebates for the purchase and retrofitting of vehicles to run on alternative fuels including natural gas. 60% of Californians voted against the measure despite the more than $17 million spent to promote the measure. Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens was a chief supporter of the proposition and is a board member of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the company which sells natural gas as transportation fuel.
What Can the World Expect from President Obama?
is the first day of the next era in America. The U.S. has chosen as its President-Elect Barack Obama, after the most exciting and galvanizing U.S. presidential election in recent memory. The partying will continue for weeks - but now comes the rolling up of sleeves and the fulfilling of promises. If Obama puts his policies where his pledges are, what are the environmental consequences? There are so many challenges we face; here, we take a look at the green ones.
Appropriately for a campaign conducted with such enthusiasm, energy has underpinned everything - and no wonder, when fuel is becoming a problem in itself, never mind its complicated relationship to food. The United States of the next few decades needs to find ways of ridding itself of an unhealthy dependence on unsustainable energy sources - and to undertake a sustainable, ethical approach towards renewable ones. Here's how the new Democratic government intends to tackle this formidable challenge:
A reduction in national oil consumption by at least 35% (or around 10 million barrels a day) by 2030 - and by the same year, a reduction in national energy usage of 50%.
A new Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund, supported by $10-15 billion per year for the next 5 years, and an overall investment of $150 billion into energy technology (and therefore green collar employment) over the next decade.
By 2025, a quarter of all energy consumed within the United States must be from renewable sources.
Despite supporting the proposed Biofuel Security Act of 2006, Obama has publicly acknowledged the problems with biofuel. "Food comes first", he says, although it's not yet clear what this means in practice.
Both presidential candidates agreed on the need for nuclear power - however, McCain was in favor of a huge investment of 45 new reactors. Unimpressed, Obama has outlined his plan of supporting and maintaining existing plants, but with the emphasis on investing in new energy sources.
"And I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy...to create 5 million new energy jobs over the next decade - jobs that pay well; jobs that can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid..."
- Barack Obama, 27th October 2008
The other eco-issue of the presidential race has been pollution.
Both candidates agreed that failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was a major blunder - and were also of one mind that the government should invest in an emissions trading program. However, Obama differed from McCain in insisting that 100% of emission credits should be auctioned off, ensuring that all pollution is paid for by the people that produced it. (Something Al Gore is sure to like.)
On top of improving the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard to 43 miles per gallon, Obama also intends to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 5% in 2015 and 10% in 2020 - a statement he made at the Detroit Economic club (you can watch it here).
Overall, Obama's campaign pledge was to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 - a striking contrast to McCain's 60% below 1990 levels by the same date.
If these proposals become reality, they would be unprecedented. Support for them and for Obama has been remarkable. Carl Pope of the grassroots environmental group the Sierra Club - an organization notoriously at odds with previous governments - has declared his support for "the strongest set of positions any candidate has ever offered".
For a man allegedly from Krypton, Obama seems remarkably comfortable with the color green. His administration has 4 years to turn these visionary promises into something tangible, and that's the real challenge - but right now, there's plenty to be optimistic about.
Appropriately for a campaign conducted with such enthusiasm, energy has underpinned everything - and no wonder, when fuel is becoming a problem in itself, never mind its complicated relationship to food. The United States of the next few decades needs to find ways of ridding itself of an unhealthy dependence on unsustainable energy sources - and to undertake a sustainable, ethical approach towards renewable ones. Here's how the new Democratic government intends to tackle this formidable challenge:
A reduction in national oil consumption by at least 35% (or around 10 million barrels a day) by 2030 - and by the same year, a reduction in national energy usage of 50%.
A new Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund, supported by $10-15 billion per year for the next 5 years, and an overall investment of $150 billion into energy technology (and therefore green collar employment) over the next decade.
By 2025, a quarter of all energy consumed within the United States must be from renewable sources.
Despite supporting the proposed Biofuel Security Act of 2006, Obama has publicly acknowledged the problems with biofuel. "Food comes first", he says, although it's not yet clear what this means in practice.
Both presidential candidates agreed on the need for nuclear power - however, McCain was in favor of a huge investment of 45 new reactors. Unimpressed, Obama has outlined his plan of supporting and maintaining existing plants, but with the emphasis on investing in new energy sources.
"And I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy...to create 5 million new energy jobs over the next decade - jobs that pay well; jobs that can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid..."
- Barack Obama, 27th October 2008
The other eco-issue of the presidential race has been pollution.
Both candidates agreed that failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was a major blunder - and were also of one mind that the government should invest in an emissions trading program. However, Obama differed from McCain in insisting that 100% of emission credits should be auctioned off, ensuring that all pollution is paid for by the people that produced it. (Something Al Gore is sure to like.)
On top of improving the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard to 43 miles per gallon, Obama also intends to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 5% in 2015 and 10% in 2020 - a statement he made at the Detroit Economic club (you can watch it here).
Overall, Obama's campaign pledge was to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 - a striking contrast to McCain's 60% below 1990 levels by the same date.
If these proposals become reality, they would be unprecedented. Support for them and for Obama has been remarkable. Carl Pope of the grassroots environmental group the Sierra Club - an organization notoriously at odds with previous governments - has declared his support for "the strongest set of positions any candidate has ever offered".
For a man allegedly from Krypton, Obama seems remarkably comfortable with the color green. His administration has 4 years to turn these visionary promises into something tangible, and that's the real challenge - but right now, there's plenty to be optimistic about.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Former EPA investigator blows whistle on Alaska oil spill
SEATTLE - A former top EPA investigator who helped lead an investigation into a giant oil spill in Alaska is blowing the whistle to KING 5 News.
The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.
In March 2006, a ruptured pipeline stained the Alaskan tundra with 200,000 gallons of North Slope crude oil. It was second only to the Exxon Valdez in spill size and damage in Alaska.
The EPA's lead criminal investigator in Seattle got an immediate phone call.
"I knew I had an investigation now to perform and I dispatched one of our special agents up to the North Slope," said Scott West, EPA Special Agent in Charge, retired.
A year before, West says he met with BP engineers and employees who said they had continually warned their superiors a long section of the pipe was deteriorating and at risk of rupturing.
"And he said OK, that leak's happened at a caribou crossing on the transit line, just like we predicted and there's oil all over the place," said West.
As West prepared for a criminal investigation into BP officials, Congress was already demanding answers in hearings and at first not getting them.
"Based upon the advice from council, I respectfully will not answer questions," Richard Woollam, former head for BP Pipeline Corrosion, had told Congress.
The Congressional panel, including Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., accused the company of failing to properly maintain the lines.
"This was a very willful, deliberate, clear, premeditated if you will, decision not to do this known maintenance," said Inslee.
While Congress kept demanding answers, West was pushing forward his criminal case.
By now, West says his case was picking up speed and strength. The FBI, the Justice Department and some of Alaska's agencies were taking part and investing time, money and energy into the investigation.
"This was one of the largest devotions of manpower to an environmental case," he said.
West says the group was looking at possible felony crimes at high level BP officials in the U.S. and Great Britain.
BP continued to clean up and replace lines and apologize for the spill, but insisted it was an unforeseeable accident.
Then suddenly, West and his investigators were called to Anchorage for an unforeseeable announcement from the Justice Department.
"I was dismissed. My investigation was shut down," said West. "I have never seen the Department of Justice shutdown an investigation this strong, moving ahead with so much momentum."
Case closed? Maybe not.
"You won't be surprised if there is Congressional interest in this to find where this thread leads," said West.
It has led West in a new direction. He's decided to close his 19 year career at EPA by blowing the whistle on his most frustrating case.
BP ended up accepting a misdemeanor charge and paying a $20 million fine.
The following statement is from BP:
We have no record that any concerns about corrosion leading to an oil transit line breach in the foreseeable future ever were communicated to BP -- by BP Alaska workers, by Mr. West, or anyone else.
If the conversations that Mr. West described occurred, then we're disappointed Mr. West or someone in EPA didn't come to us to share this specific concern so that we could have addressed it and possibly prevented this spill.
Our interactions with the Justice Department and EPA were appropriate in every way. We offered and EPA and DOJ received BP's full cooperation in their Alaska investigation.
We were not a party to discussions among EPA, the FBI and the Justice Department and cannot comment on them.
We were provided a detailed summary of comments made by Mr. West to another reporter. We read with interest that after a 17-month investigation, West and other investigators could not "realistically charge" BP with a felony and that the answer was "no" when investigators were asked if they could charge individuals.
BP admitted that its processes and systems for monitoring Prudhoe Bay oil transit lines were inadequate, admitted that negligence on the company's part resulted in the March 2006 spill and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal count.
We are not aware any evidence that anyone at BP violated the law.
The following statement is from the Justice Department:
In October of 2007, BP Exploration Alaska, Inc., agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act to resolve criminal liability relating to pipeline leaks of crude oil. As a result of the guilty plea, BP Alaska agreed to pay $20 million which included the criminal fine, community service payments and criminal restitution.
The allegations by Mr. West that the Department improperly handled the case are not based in fact and are simply not true. Mr. West implies that something sinister took place between June 12 and August 28, 2007. As with any investigation, there comes a point in time when further investigation is no longer warranted if it does not have a realistic chance of generating useful evidence. In this case, the judgment by career prosecutors was that the case had been sufficiently and fully investigated to reach appropriate charging decisions. No further investigation was likely to find evidence that would shed any new light on the essential facts of the case. The investigators from the EPA and FBI agreed with the prosecution’s approach.
This case was an example of an excellent partnership between prosecutors from Washington D.C. and those from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The following statement is from the EPA:
"EPA takes criminal violations of the law very seriously. EPA vigorously investigates and recommends charges for both individuals and corporations whenever appropriate. Over the past two years, 70% of the criminals charged in environmental crime cases were individuals, not corporations.
In the case of BP Alaska, after a robust 18-month criminal investigation, EPA, FBI, and DOT, along with DOJ prosecutors, jointly concluded the corporation was liable for a negligent discharge of oil.
EPA, along with DOJ, also concluded that further investigative efforts were unlikely to be fruitful. At the same time, nothing in the plea agreement for this investigation precludes prosecution of individuals, should events or evidence indicate misconduct.
This case was an example of strong teamwork among the agencies and resulted in the appropriate outcome.
The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.
In March 2006, a ruptured pipeline stained the Alaskan tundra with 200,000 gallons of North Slope crude oil. It was second only to the Exxon Valdez in spill size and damage in Alaska.
The EPA's lead criminal investigator in Seattle got an immediate phone call.
"I knew I had an investigation now to perform and I dispatched one of our special agents up to the North Slope," said Scott West, EPA Special Agent in Charge, retired.
A year before, West says he met with BP engineers and employees who said they had continually warned their superiors a long section of the pipe was deteriorating and at risk of rupturing.
"And he said OK, that leak's happened at a caribou crossing on the transit line, just like we predicted and there's oil all over the place," said West.
As West prepared for a criminal investigation into BP officials, Congress was already demanding answers in hearings and at first not getting them.
"Based upon the advice from council, I respectfully will not answer questions," Richard Woollam, former head for BP Pipeline Corrosion, had told Congress.
The Congressional panel, including Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., accused the company of failing to properly maintain the lines.
"This was a very willful, deliberate, clear, premeditated if you will, decision not to do this known maintenance," said Inslee.
While Congress kept demanding answers, West was pushing forward his criminal case.
By now, West says his case was picking up speed and strength. The FBI, the Justice Department and some of Alaska's agencies were taking part and investing time, money and energy into the investigation.
"This was one of the largest devotions of manpower to an environmental case," he said.
West says the group was looking at possible felony crimes at high level BP officials in the U.S. and Great Britain.
BP continued to clean up and replace lines and apologize for the spill, but insisted it was an unforeseeable accident.
Then suddenly, West and his investigators were called to Anchorage for an unforeseeable announcement from the Justice Department.
"I was dismissed. My investigation was shut down," said West. "I have never seen the Department of Justice shutdown an investigation this strong, moving ahead with so much momentum."
Case closed? Maybe not.
"You won't be surprised if there is Congressional interest in this to find where this thread leads," said West.
It has led West in a new direction. He's decided to close his 19 year career at EPA by blowing the whistle on his most frustrating case.
BP ended up accepting a misdemeanor charge and paying a $20 million fine.
The following statement is from BP:
We have no record that any concerns about corrosion leading to an oil transit line breach in the foreseeable future ever were communicated to BP -- by BP Alaska workers, by Mr. West, or anyone else.
If the conversations that Mr. West described occurred, then we're disappointed Mr. West or someone in EPA didn't come to us to share this specific concern so that we could have addressed it and possibly prevented this spill.
Our interactions with the Justice Department and EPA were appropriate in every way. We offered and EPA and DOJ received BP's full cooperation in their Alaska investigation.
We were not a party to discussions among EPA, the FBI and the Justice Department and cannot comment on them.
We were provided a detailed summary of comments made by Mr. West to another reporter. We read with interest that after a 17-month investigation, West and other investigators could not "realistically charge" BP with a felony and that the answer was "no" when investigators were asked if they could charge individuals.
BP admitted that its processes and systems for monitoring Prudhoe Bay oil transit lines were inadequate, admitted that negligence on the company's part resulted in the March 2006 spill and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal count.
We are not aware any evidence that anyone at BP violated the law.
The following statement is from the Justice Department:
In October of 2007, BP Exploration Alaska, Inc., agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act to resolve criminal liability relating to pipeline leaks of crude oil. As a result of the guilty plea, BP Alaska agreed to pay $20 million which included the criminal fine, community service payments and criminal restitution.
The allegations by Mr. West that the Department improperly handled the case are not based in fact and are simply not true. Mr. West implies that something sinister took place between June 12 and August 28, 2007. As with any investigation, there comes a point in time when further investigation is no longer warranted if it does not have a realistic chance of generating useful evidence. In this case, the judgment by career prosecutors was that the case had been sufficiently and fully investigated to reach appropriate charging decisions. No further investigation was likely to find evidence that would shed any new light on the essential facts of the case. The investigators from the EPA and FBI agreed with the prosecution’s approach.
This case was an example of an excellent partnership between prosecutors from Washington D.C. and those from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The following statement is from the EPA:
"EPA takes criminal violations of the law very seriously. EPA vigorously investigates and recommends charges for both individuals and corporations whenever appropriate. Over the past two years, 70% of the criminals charged in environmental crime cases were individuals, not corporations.
In the case of BP Alaska, after a robust 18-month criminal investigation, EPA, FBI, and DOT, along with DOJ prosecutors, jointly concluded the corporation was liable for a negligent discharge of oil.
EPA, along with DOJ, also concluded that further investigative efforts were unlikely to be fruitful. At the same time, nothing in the plea agreement for this investigation precludes prosecution of individuals, should events or evidence indicate misconduct.
This case was an example of strong teamwork among the agencies and resulted in the appropriate outcome.
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