Climate Progress » Solutions

USGBC jobs finds “Green building to support nearly 8 million U.S. jobs over next 4 years”

Joe — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:18:05 +0000

USGBC/Booz Allen Hamilton Report Shows Green Construction to Contribute $554 Billion to U.S. GDP Between 2009 and 2013.

The U.S. Green Building Council is having its huge annual conference now — you can watch live streams and archived videos of the leading experts on clean energy and energy efficiency here. And they just released a major new “Green Jobs Study” done by Booz Allen, which concluded:

The results of this study show that the economic impact from green building construction is significant and will continue to grow as the demand for green buildings rises. Green construction spending currently supports over 2 million jobs and generates over 100 billion dollars in gross domestic product and wages. By the year 2013, this study estimates that green buildings will support nearly 8 million jobs across occupations ranging from construction managers and carpenters to truck drivers and cost estimators.

The study is well worth reading — or grab some PowerPoint slides. Here’s more from the press release:

“Our goal is for the phrase ‘green building’ to become obsolete, by making all building and retrofits green – and transforming every job in our industry into a green job,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chairman of USGBC. “This study validates the work that the 25,000 people gathered here at Greenbuild, and every member of our movement, do every day.”

The study considered the total value of green buildings and the results include workers from the architects who design them to the construction laborers who pour their foundations to the truck drivers who deliver the materials, in recognition of the how extensive the impact of green building is.

“The study demonstrates that investing in green buildings contributes significantly to our nation’s wealth while creating jobs in a range of occupations, from carpenters to cost estimators,” said Gary Rahl, Officer, Global Government Market, Booz Allen Hamilton. “In many ways, green construction is becoming the standard for development. As a result, it is expected to support nearly 8 million jobs over the next five years, a number four times higher than the previous five years.”

Kudos to USGBC and Booz Allen. H/t Mnn.com.

Should electric cars be intentionally made noisier?

Joe — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:17:39 +0000

This is a guest post by Chelsea Sexton, my friend and costar of the 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?“ At a young age, Chelsea began working for GM marketing their ill-fated electric car, the EV1. She even married an EV1 service technician! Now she serves as the Executive Director of Plug In America (full bio here). Her first guest post was, “So what is it like to actually drive the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid electric car?“). This post was first published on her blog. The picture is of Fisker Karma’s artificial sound-emitting bumper speakers.

For the most part, the electric vehicle world is palpably buzzing with excitement of cars to come — and after some seriously dark years, there is much to look forward to. The collective conversation has finally shifted from “if” to “how”, but even on easier “how” points, we can’t seem to get out of our own way — which really doesn’t bode well for the hard stuff.

Case in point is a newly-emerging issue over the silence of hybrids and electric cars. In the EV generation of the 1990’s, their comparative lack of noise was a selling point. Now, according to some, it’s a threat to life itself.

Advocacy organizations and hyper news reports are forming a chorus with a fairly shrill tune: “Electric cars are going to kill blind people!” Policymakers are now considering a minimum noise requirement for vehicles; worse, automakers are doing it voluntarily. In due time, plug-ins stand to be a favorite domain of the SEMA crowd, so I’m not referring to the folks who want to trick out their EV as Kitt to their David Hasselhoff. It’s in the proposed custom to add constant noise to all hybrids and plug-in vehicles that we’ve collectively lost the plot.

Pedestrian safety is obviously not an unfair consideration, though the amount of spontaneous momentum it’s received lately raises eyebrows. Realistically, the blind community would likely be the least affected group, compared to the number of sighted pedestrians who run around with iPods connected to noise-blocking earphones or on cell phones (often all but screaming into them to be heard over traffic noise, adding to the communal din), or who simply aren’t paying as much attention as we should. And, there is experience to draw upon … in addition to the EVs deployed to date, we have a decade of experience with hybrids, also electrically driven at low speeds. Are Prii littering crosswalks and parking lots with fallen bi-peds and I’m just out of touch?

Either way, we’ve taken a question that was asked and answered years ago and are turning it into an industry imperative. Except when at a dead stop — when pedestrians of all sorts are reasonably safe, plug-in vehicles are not silent. Many are quiet (though, with today’s insulation and sound-deadening measures, so are many gas cars) but they still have some amount of motor whine, electronic humming, fans, coolant pumps, tire noise, etc. Plug-in hybrids may also have gasoline engines running. Yet even with these “features”, GM engineers thought of and addressed the issue years ago: Every EV1 came equipped with a wonkily-named “pedestrian alert alarm”. At low speeds, drivers could engage an electronic chirp/headlight flash to warn pedestrians, as needed, that the car was approaching- loud enough to get attention, but not nearly as startling as the regular horn. Drivers loved it- the car made extra noise only in the moments it mattered. Those on foot were protected- the proverbial “win-win”. So why are we trying to make what was so simply solved a dozen years ago so complicated today?

Electric vehicles were once pervertedly argued to be a social justice issue based on the idea that only wealthier folks were able to afford the early ones, so their communities would have the air-quality benefits. In response, S. David Freeman has incredulously noted that “air doesn’t know a boundary between Brentwood and South LA”. However, plug-ins could in fact be a tool in the social justice box for their lower noise profile in addition to lack of tailpipe. The goal shouldn’t be to make them louder but to aim at sucking decibels from all vehicles. Yes, I know that performance vehicle enthusiasts would have me strung up (I do grok that many think thrust is as much an aural experience as a visceral one), but who would argue that mom’s minivan is deficient without a throaty internal combustion growl? Cleaner, quieter transport means higher property values in often economically depressed neighborhoods adjacent to freeways and high-traffic roadways, to say nothing of the health of the families living there and public dollars saved from not building sound walls and other noise abatement measures. Electric drive technology has attendant benefits beyond the obvious environmental and energy concerns that we haven’t begun to analyze- but should, before we go adulterating it.

But (and it’s a big one), none of this takes away from the most important- and most overlooked point:

THE PROPULSION SYSTEM IN A VEHICLE DOES NOT ABSOLVE THE DRIVER OF THE RESPONSIBILITY NOT TO HIT SOMEONE.

More simply said, if you can’t avoid hitting people you shouldn’t be driving a vehicle of any kind. In all of the angst over this issue, it bears repeating. Now can we please — pretty please — get back to the actual (and not insignificant) work of putting cars on the road?

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Joe — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:58:21 +0000

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county’s growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit stations as long as they also construct bike paths and walkways, put shops and other amenities nearby, and use environmentally friendly construction methods.

I don’t do a lot of local area reporting, but this front page (!) Washington Post story, “Montgomery draws a car-free blueprint for growth,” seemed newsworthy. The picture above is of the Rockville Pike corridor, and anyone who has driven around Rockville knows it is as car-centric as anywhere in America.

The county is working to change that:

Most suburban growth plans — including Montgomery’s, until Tuesday — discourage development in congested areas, including those near public transit, and encourage construction in more sparsely populated communities, on the theory that new developments should arise where traffic is still tolerable.

But Montgomery’s new plan takes a different tack, one that smart-growth advocates say is long overdue. With the population nearing 1 million, the Washington suburb is substantially larger than the big city to its south but is still managing growth as if everyone can hop in a car and quickly get where they want to go.

The county’s growth policy is revisited every two years. The new plan could boost efforts to redevelop the jumbled White Flint area along Rockville Pike and provide new impetus to build a “science city” spearheaded by Johns Hopkins University west of Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg….

The council also endorsed a plan from County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), whose district is likely to be the epicenter of much of the urban-style growth, to use development fees to improve a transit system that commuters say is increasingly inadequate….

Planners predict that 200,000 people are likely to move to the county in the next 20 years, bumping the population to more than 1 million. To find a way to house the expected newcomers and get them to and from work, the Planning Board had recommended that developers get discounts and rewards if they are willing to idle their properties for a few years and to build denser development and taller buildings, up to 300 feet in some areas, near the county’s Metro stations.

The Planning Board has also tried to make improving transit an ironclad condition of much new development.

When the board approved the proposed science city in July, members were adamant that it could not be built unless the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway bus or rail system is funded and built. Funding transit, however, is up to federal, state and local lawmakers, all of whom are struggling with massive budget shortfalls, so the Planning Board can advocate for but not create it.

As the price of oil returns to and then exceeds its previous records, funding for bus or rail systems will become a bigger and bigger priority state and federal level, so it is important for local planners to start designing for that.

And while I’m not certain the phrase “car-free” is a fully accurate description of what Montgomery County is pursuing, they deserve kudos for this smart growth plan.

Making Buses Cool Again

Can’t teach an old car company new tricks — not even when it’s under new management

Sean Pool — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:03:56 +0000

Despite promises to fast-track development of three electric car models using federal loan dollars to prevent its bankruptcy, Chrysler announced yesterday that it will instead disband the engineering team responsible for the projects.

For decades Chrysler has relied on selling gas hogs like trucks and minivans to turn a profit. As the producer of five out of the top 10 most polluting, inefficient passenger vehicles in America, Chrysler has not surprisingly seen its sales plummet by half in the last few years of volatile gas prices. So the plans to become a leader in the electric vehicles market introduced under pre-bailout CEO Bob Nardelli seemed like a welcome change of direction for this old industrial giant.

However, Chrysler’s new CEO Sergio Marchionne, who took leadership of the company after the government-brokered merger with Fiat, is himself personally skeptical of electric vehicles, stating that E.V.’s will only account for one to two percent of overall production by 2015 – a mere 60,000 vehicles.

The announcement that Chrysler’s electric vehicle program, ENVI, would be scrapped came amidst optimistic projections in the company’s brand new 5-year plan. “Some of you have [assumed] that we are losing money,” said Marchionne, “this is not true.” The 5-year plan promises repayment of the $12.5 billion bailout money by 2015, resting these projections on questionable assumptions that the company would double its sales by 2014, and grow revenue by 20% each year for the next five years. “Today is the first day of the new Chrysler.”

Unfortunately, the “new Chrysler” is going to be one that produces about half a million fewer electric vehicles by 2014 than it promised in its application for the $12.5 billion federal bailout it received from taxpayers. Not only will this slow the growth of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on US roads, it will also have negative supply-chain effects on suppliers of critical components, such as battery manufacturer A123.

These are the technologies that Chrysler promised American taxpayers when it sent its CEO to Washington begging for money to avoid its collapse. To renege from the agreement is unethical at best and downright dubious at worst. As recently as August, Chrysler received $70 million more in federal funds from DOE to support the development of a fleet of 220 test vehicles, which has now been scrapped.

Meanwhile, virtually every other major US automaker is putting a serious down payment on commercializing an electric drive or hybrid vehicle – from small start ups like Tesla, Fiskar, and Coda to giant mega brands like Honda, GM, and Toyota. GM plans to have the first U.S. plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Volt, on the market next year. GM estimates that it could get 203 miles per gallon.

Maybe Chrysler’s departure from electric vehicles is a sign of an early industry “shake out,” where companies without a competitive advantage tip their hat and exit the market when they foresee an inability to compete. But with more efficient fuel economy standards to contend it seems unwise for a company struggling to define its future to be turning its back on electric drive technology.
– Sean Pool

Road to Copenhagenm, Part 5: Awesomely audacious leadership vs. nattering nabobs of negativism*

Bill Becker — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:34:14 +0000

We are only just beginning to scratch the surface of the power of a positive vision of an abundant future…

Rob Hopkins, “The Transition Handbook”

During his 10 months in office, President Barack Obama and his team have assembled an impressive list of accomplishments on energy and climate policy. Some might conclude the President has done about all he can do with the powers of his office.

One would be wrong. What energy and climate security require — what the future of the American Dream demands — is audacious big-picture ideas that capture the imagination, stir the emotions, speak to the souls, rally the support and win the involvement of the American people. That’s been lacking so far in the President’s climate leadership.

I suspect there is a sizeable segment of the American people waiting to be engaged, waiting to have their imaginations triggered, waiting to understand what a new energy economy looks like and what they can do to build it. I’m not saying that citizens can’t act without top-down leadership. Indeed, as President Obama hinted recently in his “Grab a Mop” speech, there’s fundamental unfairness, guaranteed stasis and more than a little buck-passing when we citizens stand on the sidelines, some expecting the White House to do everything, others protesting it is doing far too much.

In regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, each of us is capable of grabbing a mop and mopping. It’s as easy as turning off the lights. But there is tremendous motivation in knowing that we’re part of a mop uprising, a society-wide mopping mission, with a common understanding of why we’re mopping. Dedication to visions and common causes is what got us through World War II, landed us on the moon, secured the legal rights of women and minorities, and built the interstate highway system.

The leader who first steps forward to communicate a clear vision of a sustainable world and who stirs us to act as a nation — he or she will be a leader for the ages. That’s because the climate challenge isn’t just about the weather. It’s about a fundamental reordering of our species’ relationship with nature. It’s about ending an epoch of mankind as megalomaniac. It’s about accepting our dependence on natural systems and other countries.

If interdependence sounds like Gaia-speak, then think of the swine flu pandemic; the global recession; food riots; and climate change itself. It really should not take islands disappearing under the sea to convince us that no man is an island.

If we must fight a war of ideas to win support for sustainable human society, then so be it. Unless America has lost its soul, that war would be no contest. On one side is the army of hope, fighting for a future that is more secure, moral and genuinely prosperous, where resource conflicts and extreme poverty are distant memories.

On the other side is the Army of No, the foot soldiers of a “no-can-do” society, the paid purveyors of fear, the scalp-hunters and character assassins, rumor mongers, professional dividers and the false prophets of a “business as usual” world that no longer is possible. They use scare words like Hitler, socialism and taxes. They tell us that in a low-carbon society our showers will go cold, our beer will go warm, our jobs will disappear, and our energy bills will bankrupt us.

None of that is true, of course, and it appeals to the worst in us. But we are still a can-do nation. We can build a low-carbon economy that is a low-cost economy. We can have hot showers and cold beer without heating up the atmosphere. We can send our kids off to college rather than sending them to die in oil wars. We can build a new economy and achieve a new and improved American Dream. It’s damned un-American to suggest we can’t.

To accomplish those things, we need big changes motivated by big ideas we can understand and believe in. Here for an encore are a few I’ve proposed in the past:

A National Clean Energy Surge: In a speech to a conference in Appalachia last week, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers proposed that the United States become the most energy-efficient nation on the planet. If the chief executive of the country’s third-largest carbon polluter can embrace that big idea, then the White House and the rest of us surely can.

President Obama pointed out during his campaign that 21 countries are more energy-efficient than the United States. We gave up our leadership long ago in key renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power. That doesn’t bode well for our economy, our carbon emissions, or our international competitiveness. The President should set specific stretch goals to improve energy efficiency in every sector of the U.S. economy and to make America the world’s leading consumer and producer of renewable energy.

The Administration has taken a number of steps toward that goal, some small and some more significant: new efficiency rules for vehicles, major new funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program, a directive that new federal buildings require zero-net-energy by 2030, to cite just a few examples. President Obama should bundle up these efforts along with the money in the stimulus bill and the incentives contained in recent energy bills, for an unprecedented campaign that engages every red-blooded American in making our nation the cleanest and most resource-efficient on the planet.

Energizing Rural America: Rural America has a central role to play in our sustainable future. It will be the nation’s principal supplier of low-carbon energy. Farmers, residents and rural small businesses will flourish with new jobs, new income and new tax base from green energy production.

Food and fiber will grow alongside wind farms and solar farms. Feedlots and landfills will capture methane to help power the rural economy. Farmers will grow feed-stocks for cellulosic ethanol on land considered marginal for conventional crops. Farm equipment will run on locally grown low-carbon fuels. Carbon-conscious tillage and forestry management will be a new source of farm revenues in a cap-and-trade economy.

In Congress this year, prominent elements of the farm lobby have fought against this vision, worried that fuel and fertilizers will cost more when we put a price on carbon. But that would only be true if farmers continue relying on carbon-intensive fuels and products, fail to adopt more fuel-efficient equipment and agricultural practices, and decide not to offset higher fossil energy prices by capturing the new income opportunities in green energy. Even then, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the Waxman-Markey bill would reduce annual net farm income only 0.9 percent in the short-term.

That’s a very small price to pay to avoid agriculture’s real parched-earth scenario: climate-induced drought, extreme weather, changed growing patterns, and more pests and plant diseases.

One year ago, the Presidential Climate Action Project gave Obama’s team a policy agenda for rural America’s dynamic role in a new energy economy. Among its ideas are re-missioning the Cooperative Extension Service, rural electrification programs and other applicable federal farm programs to retool rural communities and farms. In the past, rural areas have been the economically distressed stepchildren of the industrial economy. In the future, they will be the powerhouse of our new energy economy.

The Future We Want: Despite the strange box-office appeal of apocalypse, we’re in danger of becoming emotionally battered these days by Hollywood’s versions of civilization’s collapse. The Eleventh Hour, The Day After Tomorrow and now 2012 threaten to scare the living optimism out of the American people.

Understanding the terrible consequences of inaction is important. Conservatives use fear as a tool to resist change; climate activists use it to urge change. The problem is, by focusing on collapse with too little counter-focus on what we can build, we are in danger of creating the future we fear.

I believe we are poised for hope. We want hope. We hope for hope. Hope is what got President Obama elected; it should be the foundation on which he rallies us to build an historic legacy at this turning point in the American story. Fifty or 100 years from now, the history books will not say much about health care reform. They will have a great deal to say about what we did or did not do about climate change.

We see trace evidence of our latent hope in the UN’s Hopenhagen campaign, the America 2050 project of the Regional Plan Association in New York, and in the viral video of a yes-we-can speech by Drew Jones of the Sustainability Institute. There’s The Future We Want, in which I and several colleagues will use state-of-the-art communications techniques to show the American people what a sustainable society will be like, and to involve them in designing it.

Legally, the President of the United States has limited power, only what Congress has delegated, the courts have ruled or precedent has established. Emotionally, President Obama has enormous power to inspire. He has a special gift for that, but he has not yet fully used it to enlist us in building a sustainable 21^st Century society.

– Bill Becker

* Thanks to the late William Safire for this newly appropriate phrase.

List of Accomplishments: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ william-s-becker/ dressing-for-copenhagen_b_325070.html

Grab a Mop speech: http://www.grabamop.com/

Stretch goals: http://climateprogress.org/ 2009/ 05/ 02/ the-next-100-days-green-fdr/ #more-6201

Farm lobby: http://www.economist.com/ world/ unitedstates/ displayStory.cfm?story_id=14700744

PCAP ag policy agenda: http://www.climateactionproject.com/ docs/ pcap/ Chapter_5_Agriculture_11_10_08.pdf

Hopenhagen: www.hopenhagen.org

America 2050: http://www.america2050.org/about.html

Drew Jones video: http://livingclimatechange.com/ index.php/ 2009/ 10/ simulating-climate-hope/

Future we want: www.futurewewant.org

David Frum says “Conservatives Heart Nuke Power.” Too bad they don’t “brain” it.

Joe — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:17:06 +0000

I always thought it was conservatives who accused progressives of being driven by their heart and not their brain. A painfully uninformed David Frum wades into the debate over nuclear power with a post headlined, “Conservatives Heart Nuke Power“:

First Brad Plumer in the New Republic, then Matt Yglesias on his site have marveled at the supposedly strange enthusiasm of conservatives for nuclear power. What’s strange about it? It’s pure cold economic rationality. If you wish to move away from carbon-emitting electricity sources, nuclear is far and away the cheapest choice. If we’re not going to rely more on nuclear power, then the reduction in carbon emissions will have to imply some dramatic reductions in standards of living.

Not.

Former Presidential speechwriter Frum is best known for helping to originating the “axis of evil” metaphor (his first phrase, “axis of hatred,” was changed to “axis of evil” by Michael Gerson, Bush’s chief speechwriter, who wanted to use more “theological language,” as Frum explains in his book on page 238). He apparently hails from the Bizarro World, whose Code states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!”

New nuclear power plants are currently far and away the most expensive form of carbon free power you can (try to) buy — assuming you could find a nuclear vendor today that was actually willing to guarantee a price for their product in a Public Utility Commission hearing, which you can’t.

Indeed, the French government-owned nuclear giant, Areva threatened work stoppage in late summer at the Finnish nuke they were building over who would pay for cost overruns. Areva had made clear in May it wasn’t going to keep swallowing the price escalation risk — see “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”

The most detailed independent cost estimate of nuclear power published this year — here on Climate Progress by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A. Severance (see “Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power“) — puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour — triple current U.S. electricity rates!

And that was just one week after Time magazine noted that nuclear plants’ capital costs are “out of control,” concluding:

Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1¢ to 3¢ per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget.

The price of power plants has soared here and abroad this year.

Progress Energy in Florida had said in 2008 that the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intends to build would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.” And that didn’t even count the 200-mile $3 billion transmission system utility needs, which brings the price up to a staggering $7,700 a kilowatt. Under Florida law, to pay for these nuclear power plants, Progress Energy can raise the rates of its customers a $100 a year for years and years and years before they even get one kilowatt-hour from these plants.

Ratepayers in the region are being asked to swallow another rate increase (and a 20-month delay) on top of the 25% increase they saw in January (see “What do you get when you buy a nuke?“).

Ya gotta “heart” that. Or perhaps the better pop-culture reference would be to say, “Excellent!”

It isn’t just this country — see “Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour.“

Indeed, our nuclear-friendly neighbor up north just saw the mother of all nuclear bids: “Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid“. And that bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. was the only “compliant” bid received:

The bid from France’s Areva NP also blew past expectations, sources said. Areva’s bid came in at $23.6 billion, with two 1,600-megawatt reactors costing $7.8 billion and the rest of the plant costing $15.8 billion. It works out to $7,375 per kilowatt,

Areva “was deemed non-compliant, however, likely because Areva wouldn’t guarantee the price.”

That’s right, Areva bid a whopping $23.6, but wouldn’t even guarantee that price.

Ya gotta “heart” that.

Right now, efficiency, recycled energy, wind, biomass, geothermal, new hydro (!), concentrated solar thermal, and even PV [roughly in that order] can deliver low-carbon power cheaper than whatever price you can get guaranteed by a nuclear vendor or utility in this country (see “An introduction to the core climate solutions“). And that doesn’t even count low-cost fuel switching from coal to natural gas in existing plants (see “Game changer, Part 2: Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet“).

Progressives “brain” clean energy!

h/t Yglesias.

Ecologist George Woodwell on Cape Cod Wind and Copenhagen: “We have poisoned our global habitat and must move rapidly to correct the trend.”

Guest — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:46:16 +0000

Today’s guest blogger is Dr. George M. Woodwell, founder, Director Emeritus and Senior Scientist at the The Woods Hole Research Center. He has published more than 300 papers in ecology. His “research has been on the structure and function of natural communities and their role as segments of the biosphere…. For many years he has studied the biotic interactions associated with the warming of the earth.”

The most recent caper by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has been to enlist two tribes of the Wampanoag Indians to claim that Nantucket Sound is “traditional cultural property” and must be protected as a whole from the 130 wind turbines of the Cape Wind Project. The claim, coming only now after more than eight years of discussion, two extensive environmental impact reviews, a comprehensive book by local authors, and scores of news reports and editorials, is outrageous, simply silly, and should be dismissed out of hand.

After more than a century of accelerating reliance on fossil fuels as the principal source of energy to drive a rapidly expanding technological society, the world is beset by a global environmental emergency. We have poisoned our global habitat and must move rapidly to correct the trend. The Cape Wind project is a powerful and appropriate step, a model for the world.

It would with 130 wind turbines, well off the Cape shore, produce power equivalent to ¾ of the base-load of Cape Cod, Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket. Other wind turbines have already been installed on the Cape and still others are planned or are being installed currently. One, the Woods Hole Research Center’s 100 kw turbine, has in the first few days of operation produced about 7% of the total annual use of energy by the entire institution. It is expected to produce annually an excess of energy above the institution’s demand. While the total energy production of all of these machines is not yet known, it will take but little in addition to the Cape Wind Project to make the Cape and the Islands a net source of electrical energy for the New England region, a powerful example for the nation and the world.

In December there will be an important meeting in Copenhagen of the approximately 190 parties that have ratified the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The hope for that meeting is that it will produce an agreement among the nations to common action in systematically implementing the Convention. Success there would set a path for abandoning fossil fuels and preserving the remaining primary forests whose destruction is also a significant source of carbon dioxide for the atmosphere.

How good it would be at this point for the US to enter those discussions with the announcement that the nation is underway not only with the Cape Wind Project, now so extensively reviewed, and endorsed by state and federal officials, but also with an array of other projects whose sum will exceed the needs of the region to make the Cape a net source of renewable electrical power for New England. The US would swing, suddenly and ominously, from laggard to leader on energy management for the world.

That is the leadership we and the rest of the world expect of our nation.

Road to Copenhagen, Part 3: Re-Tooling Industry

Bill Becker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:25:07 +0000

In case we need more evidence that an urgent economic transformation is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, it can be found in a new study commissioned by World Wildlife Fund International.

Conducted by Climate Risk Pty. Ltd. of Great Britain and Australia, the study concludes:

Runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialization over the next five years [emphasis added]… World governments have a window that will close between now and 2014. In that time they must establish fully operational, low-carbon industrial architecture. This must drive a low-carbon re-industrialization that will be faster than any previous economic and industry transformation…Today, only three out of 20 industries are moving sufficiently fast enough.

By “low carbon re-industrialization”, the authors mean energy efficiency and clean generation technologies, low-carbon agriculture, and sustainable forestry. They have identified 24 critical resources and industries the world will need to develop quickly to avoid climate catastrophe. Among their conclusions:

By itself, emissions trading will not be enough to cause the necessary re-industrialization of the world economy. We will need massive private investments; tens of trillions of dollars from the investment community; and more aggressive government action to create a stable long-term investment environment.

“Starting with the least-cost mitigation solutions and working our way forward to higher-cost solutions as carbon prices rise – that approach will take too long,” says Sean Kidney, Climate Risk’s manager in Europe. “We need to tackle all solutions at the same time.”

To achieve an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, the world will have to invest $400 billion annually in green industries by 2025. Every year the economic transformation is delayed will increase its costs and the rate of low-carbon industrial growth required for de-carbonizing industry.

Due to the large economies of scale created in the transition, the average production costs of renewable energy technologies will become less than energy produced from fossil fuels. The cost “cross-over” will start as early as 2013 and all renewable industries will be independently viable by 2050, even without a price on carbon. This will deliver energy savings of $47 trillion by 2050.

“We can harvest these enormous future savings now to create an income stream that funds the capital expenditures we need,” Kidney says. How? Kidney and his colleagues are working on a number of ideas for new bonding mechanisms designed specifically to finance low-carbon investments.

What is government’s role? The Presidential Climate Action Project has submitted several re-industrialization proposals to the Obama Administration and Congress. Among them:

Stabilize federal incentives for the development of green markets and industries. The federal government’s on-again/off-again incentives for solar and wind development are an example of disruptive rather than constructive government intervention. Uncertainty about the stability of those incentives in recent years put renewable energy companies on a roller-coaster ride rather than a stable up-ramp for development.

Make aggressive commitments at the federal and state levels to decarbonize government supply chains. At last count, the federal government had more than 500,000 buildings, 600,000 vehicles and $18 billion in energy expenditures each year. Establishing low-carbon requirements for the companies that supply those products will help produce the economies of manufacturing scale that drive down costs for the rest of society.

Update and revitalize the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industries of the Future program. That Clinton-era initiative helped America’s most energy-intensive industries create technology roadmaps to a future of much greater energy efficiency and much less pollution. The roadmaps guided federal R&D and industry investment. In its new incarnation, the program should be expanded to all of our most carbon-intensive industries and to define each of their paths to a low-carbon future.

Expand DOE’s Industrial Assessment Center program and include carbon audits. In this program, graduate engineering students and faculty at participating universities conduct free energy audits for small and medium industries. If carbon audits were added, students would learn some of the engineering skills they’ll need in a low-carbon economy, while providing small manufacturing companies with the technical help they need to thrive in a carbon-constrained market.

Dedicate a significant portion of cap-and-trade revenues to the reinvention of American industry, including tax credits for businesses that install, manufacture or service the products necessary to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Include transition incentives for small businesses – our largest source of new jobs and innovations.

Regularly update the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides – a set of guidelines first issued in 1992 to discourage corporate greenwashing. In the wide-wide world of sustainability, consumers already face a daunting array of green labels: the recycled-content logo, various forest-certification systems, Green-E certification for renewable energy, LEED for buildings, the Green Press Initiative logo, the Ancient Forest Friendly initiative, Green Seal, USDA’s National Organic certification, EPA’s Energy Star label. Canada has an EgoLogo program, the EU has the EcoFlower label, Germany has the Blue Angel label and five Nordic countries use the Nordic Swan label. As green products increase in popularity, we can expect more of these programs. We may not come up with a universal green label, but government can establish the standards by which green labels are judged.

Support the United Nations’ Global Green New Deal initiative, which is working to quantify and promote the potential of green industries to alleviate poverty, reduce environmental damage and create new jobs worldwide. The World Bank has just estimated that developing economies will need as much as $100 billion annually until mid-century – double current foreign aid from developed nations – just to adapt to climate change. That means new demand for the products and services of companies that can help nations cut their greenhouse gases and cope with the climate changes already on the way.

We will not avoid climate catastrophe merely by tinkering around the edges of industrial society or by counting on a slow evolution of technologies and markets. As businessman and environmentalist Paul Hawken puts it, “There isn’t one single thing that we make that doesn’t require a complete remake.”

Alex Steffen, the executive editor of worldchanging.com, says: “The magnitude of the crises we face, the speed with which they are unfolding…mean that the solutions we need to embrace are not going to be the same sort of solutions we’re used to thinking of now…Faced with the need to reinvent the material basis of our civilization, we argue paper or plastic.”

Can we reinvent world industry in only five years? The rapid redirection of U.S. industry during World War II suggests that it may be possible – but not without intense collaboration between governments and industries. There must be a third party in the deal, too: the citizen-consumer. In my next post, I’ll suggest how government, industry and consumers can collaborate in a new social contract for economic transformation.

– Bill Becker

[JR: I would note that if this statement is true -- "To achieve an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, the world will have to invest $400 billion annually in green industries by 2025" -- the U.S. share is about $100 billion a year, which is just about what the climate and clean energy bill would result in (see "The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill"). I actually think we'll need a bigger investment, maybe twice as big by 2025.]

Solar power when the sun goes down — with help from United Technologies

Joe — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:09:22 +0000

Concentrated solar thermal with storage (aka solar baseload) remains “The technology that will save humanity.” And we are seeing more and more plants in various phases of construction (see “World’s largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone“).

The easiest way to deal with the intermittency of the sun is cheap storage — and thermal storage is much cheaper and has a much higher round-trip efficiency than electric storage. The ability to provide power reliably throughout the day and evening in key locations around the world (including China and India) is why CSP delivers 3 of the 12 – 14 wedges needed for “the full global warming solution.”

Now “A Santa Monica, Calif., company called SolarReserve has taken a step toward making that a reality, filing an application with California regulators to build a 150-megawatt solar farm that will store seven hours’ worth of the sun’s energy in the form of molten salt,” as the NYT’s Green Inc. reports today. “Heat from the salt can be released when it’s cloudy or at night to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.” And SolarReserve has a big-time Fortune 50 clean energy partner:

United Technologies has licensed the technology to SolarReserve and will guarantee its performance — a crucial advantage for the startup when it seeks financing from skittish bankers to build the Rice solar farm.

Below is an artist’s rendering of such a plant that focuses thousands of mirrors on millions of gallons of liquefied salt:

Here are more details:

The Rice Solar Energy Project, to be built in the Sonoran Desert east of Palm Springs, will “generate steady and uninterrupted power during hours of peak electricity demand,” according to SolarReserve’s license application.

So-called dispatchable solar farms would in theory allow utilities to avoid spending billions of dollars building fossil fuel power plants that are fired up only a few times a year when electricity demand spikes, like on a hot day.

SolarReserve is literally run by rocket scientists, many of whom formerly worked at Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of the technology giant United Technologies. Rocketdyne developed the solar salt technology, which was proven viable at the 10-megawatt Solar Two demonstration project near Barstow, Calif., in the 1990s….

As many as 17,500 large mirrors — each one 24 feet by 28 feet — will be attached to 12-foot pedestals. The mirrors, called heliostats, will be arrayed in a circle around a 538-foot concrete tower.

Atop the tower will sit a 100-foot receiver filled with 4.4 million gallons of liquid salt. The heliostats will focus the sun on the receiver, heating the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.

SolarReserve isn’t the only developer planning to tap molten salt to store solar energy. Abengoa Solar, for instance, intends to use salt storage at its 280-megawatt Solana solar trough plant outside Phoenix.

That project, however, will heat tubes filled with synthetic oil to create steam and transfer some of the heat to salt-filled storage tanks. By using salt for both steam and storage, SolarReserve can generate higher-temperature steam, which will allow the Rice power plant to operate much more efficiently, according to Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive.

“Consequently, our system can capture three times the energy for the same pound of salt,” Mr. Smith wrote in an e-mail message. “Plus they have additional ‘bolt on’ equipment, plus multiple heat transfer steps to go from oil to salt to oil and then to steam for electricity generation.”

SolarReserve’s plant will be built on private land — the site of a former World War II-era Army airfield — near the desert ghost town of Rice. The company will air-cool the power plant, avoiding controversies over water use that have dogged other solar projects….

The company said it is negotiating with California utilities to buy the electricity generated from the Rice project and expects the solar farm to go online in October 2013, barring unforeseen delays.

Greening Your Small Business

Guest — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:24:46 +0000

CP’s newest guest blogger is Jennifer Kaplan, founder of Greenhance LLC, which offers small businesses environmentally friendly marketing and graphic design. She also teaches marketing at Marymount University in Arlington, VA. Her new book from Prentice Hall, “Greening Your Small Business: How to Improve Your Bottom Line, Grow Your Brand, Satisfy Your Customers—and Save the Planet,” comes out this month.

There’s a revolution going on in the American marketplace. Businesses across the country are changing the way they operate by incorporating green practices, products, and objectives into their business models. And some savvy entrepreneurs are getting in on the ground floor. At the same time, others are still wondering where small businesses fit into this new paradigm.

If you are wondering where small business fits into the green revolution let’s start with the recognition that 27 million small businesses can have a big impact. There are many business owners, however, who are doubtful and wonder whether small business has a role to play in managing climate change. Surely, they think, most small business’ individual impacts are minuscule, possibly immeasurably small. But the reality is that, in aggregate, the total climate-related impact of small businesses adds up. Without question every business, no matter the size, has an indirect impact on climate; the electricity, heating, cooling, transportation, and other services they use all translate into CO₂ output with global warming impact. Then there’s the law of large numbers—a small action multiplied by 27 million has a significant impact.

Take the example of green information technology.

For a small business, IT may not seem like a likely candidate for greening, but given the scale of computer use among small businesses, it is. Although the environmental impact of a businesses’ IT operations varies greatly depending on how much computer hardware is needed to run the business, reductions in energy consumption and energy expenses can be made for operations that have a single computer on site. It may be that there is no area of business more subject to the law of large numbers than information technology. Consider these facts: Having a single computer on-site can increase the amount of electricity a business uses per square foot by an average of 60%, and the percentage generally goes up as you add more computers. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that electricity consumption for computers and office equipment will grow more than twice as fast as electricity use as a whole, and notes that the energy consumed in commercial buildings by PCs and other types of office equipment consumes about as much as is needed to air-condition those same buildings. It is also estimated that CO₂ emissions related to the operation of PCs, computer servers, and telecommunications networks contribute more than 2% of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. That’s generally the same amount of greenhouse gasses being produced by all the world’s airplanes.

At the same time, technology is one of the greatest assets in the greening movement. Nothing is more effective for reducing use and waste of resources than technology. Internet technology is expected to contribute significantly to reductions in energy consumption in the future. E-commerce replaces energy intensive bricks-and-mortar stores. Electronic content management systems replace paper processes. Digital advertising replaces paper-based advertising. GPS systems reduce idling. The list goes on and on. The ultimate goal is to design operations so that you employ the most energy-efficient technology available to implement the most resource-reducing practices possible.

And finally, industry is being forced to change the way it thinks about the life cycle of the technology it produces. Everything about the electronics lifecycle is in flux—from the way materials are sourced to the way goods are constructed to the way end-users manage power to managing global regulations that put limits on toxic chemicals and emissions to the development of adequate end-of-life recycling programs. Environmental groups are working to educate consumers about the environmental impacts of manufacturing processes and about the critical need to embrace responsible e-waste recycling. Because the awareness surrounding the environmental impact of technology is changing, there are few universally agreed-upon rules and best practices. As a result, advice to small business owners varies widely. It can be more confusing than ever to green your IT operations. But, whatever your industry, managing costs is good for your business; and increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy costs does just that. Given rising energy prices and a growing awareness of the importance of energy conservation, carefully conceived energy management with a green IT strategy may well be one of the most important steps you can take to sustain and grow your business.

So, if you’re still wondering why small businesses should care about sustainability, the answer is pretty simple. Wasted resources increase the cost of doing business. As it has been said before, sustainability is just a new name for an old concept: Reducing waste and streamlining costs. These are two lessons from which all businesses—large and small—can benefit.