Green Technology Forum

This Wednesday, May 14, actor Ed Norton, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and experts in the field of green building appeared before Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to discuss how more efficient buildings and better building policies can reduce energy costs and cut global warming pollution. Norton is a Trustee for the Enterprise Foundation and works to bring green building practices to low-income housing development.

The building sector is responsible for 48 percent of all heat-trapping emissions, and it is estimated that 76 percent of all electricity generated by U.S. power plants goes to operate buildings. As energy prices rise — increasing the costs of cooling, heating and construction — green building has become a popular mantra for homeowners, corporations and environmentalists alike. Yet the numerous definitions of green buildings can lead to confusion, inaction or ineffective policy. As Congress examines all sources and causes of global warming emissions, it must consider how the buildings we work and live in can contribute to reducing the impact of climate change.

Source: globalwarming.house.gov

State lawmakers Thursday unveiled a package of bills designed to spur investment in clean energy research and help California compete with other states and nations for green jobs.

Several of the bills, however, are costly or would involve incurring billions in debt, which could hurt their prospects as the Legislature grapples with what is now an estimated $8 billion deficit. (The governor and lawmakers took action earlier this month that is expected to cut in half what was then a projected $16 billion deficit).

Still, legislators and representatives of “green tech” companies said that state government can play an important role in boosting a fledgling but potentially lucrative industry for California.

“The digital revolution was heavily subsidized,” said Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, D-San Diego, who is pitching a $2 billion bond measure (Assembly Bill 2003) to invest in solar, wind and other alternative energy technologies. “And it was a very smart investment by the federal government.”

Two senators are proposing similar bond measures, one also for $2 billion and another for $3 billion. And Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, has a bill (Senate Bill 1760) calling on state agencies to craft a plan to spend $200 million on green energy research.

Not all the ideas would cost the state big dollars. Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, wants the state to create standards for a voluntary “carbon labeling program” that would allow manufacturers to tag products with information about their carbon footprints.

Sen. Dean Florez, D-Fresno, meanwhile, wants to establish a standard for investors to gauge how environmentally-friendly California businesses are (Senate Bill 1550) before deciding where to put their money. He called the idea “a tool to help investors know who the good actors are when it comes to cleaning our air and being responsible stewards of our planet.”

The proposals come as state regulators work to implement Assembly Bill 32, the ambitious 2006 initiative to slash state greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. On Thursday, a committee of businesses executives, many in the green technology field, presented a report outlining ways to streamline government regulations and use technology to meet the bill’s mandate.

One idea, said Jim Hawley, senior vice president of TechNet, is to make government land available for large-scale “solar fields.” Officials can also offer tax incentives, he said, to encourage research in “green” technology and prod alternative energy firms to build plants in California.

source: Oakland Tribune

The green building movement continues to roll. Once a rarity, gold and platinum LEED certifications are a common theme in newspapers and on blogs around the country. Last week, the National Association of Home Builders announced standards for more sustainable residential construction. But the newest frontier in this area is green building codes. Already a number of large cities have adopted standards for public projects. For instance, destroyed by an F-5 tornado last May, the town of Greensburg, KS has decided to make all of its larger city buildings LEED platinum. Now, cities and states have begun to require more efficient building practices for private buildings too.

A new Connecticut law requires that all new public and private buildings costing over $5 million and renovations be built to meet or exceed silver LEED certification standards. The 30,000-ish person town of Monroe, NY, located just west of the West Point Military Academy, has proposed regulations that would make all new housing comply with Energy Star standards, while other buildings larger than 4,000 square feet meet LEED standards.

Now, the big dogs are getting into the mix. Cities councils Los Angeles have voted in favor of a new ordinance ensuring that all private buildings over 50,000 square feet meet a checklist of sustainability requirements. The standards, less stringent than LEED standards, appears to be a negotiated deal between city leaders and building interests. Some groups are advocating to drop the square footage requirements to 25,000 and raising the stringency to LEED silver.

Meanwhile, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels wants to reshape his city into “America’s green building capital”. While his announcement was short on details, he plans to appoint a panel this spring to develop a strategy to reduce energy use in new and existing commercial and residential buildings by 20%. The mayor believes that the initiative will not only move the city toward its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, but reduce energy bills and spur green collar job creation as well.

source: matterwork.com

“The huge energy challenges facing China and India are global energy challenges and call for a global response. The World Energy Outlook 2007 charts a course to a more secure, competitive, lower-carbon energy system – a course that must involve the world’s two emerging giants”, said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today in London at the launch of the latest edition of the Outlook. The annual flagship publication of the IEA this year focuses on energy developments in China and India and their implications for the world.

“WEO-2007 demonstrates more clearly than ever that, if governments don’t change their policies, oil and gas imports, coal use and greenhouse-gas emissions are set to grow inexorably through to 2030 – even faster, in fact, than in last year’s Outlook. These trends would threaten energy security and accelerate climate change. But the Outlook also shows how new policies can pave the way to an alternative energy future”, Mr. Tanaka stressed.

Energy developments in China and India are transforming the global energy system as a result of their sheer size and their growing importance in international energy markets. “Rapid economic development will undoubtedly continue to drive up energy demand in China and India, and will contribute to a real improvement in the quality of life for more than two billion people. This is a legitimate aspiration that needs to be accommodated and supported by the rest of the world”, said Mr. Tanaka. “Indeed, most countries stand to benefit economically from China’s and India’s economic development through international trade.”

But the consequences of unfettered growth in global energy demand are alarming for all countries. If governments around the world stick with existing policies – the underlying premise of the WEO Reference Scenario – the world’s energy needs would be well over 50% higher in 2030 than today. China and India together account for 45% of the increase in global primary energy demand in this scenario. Both countries’ energy use is set to more than double between 2005 and 2030. Worldwide, fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – continue to dominate the fuel mix. Among them, coal is set to grow most rapidly, driven largely by power-sector demand in China and India. These trends lead to continued growth in global energy-related emissions of carbon-dioxide (CO2), from 27 Gt in 2005 to 42 Gt in 2030 – a rise of 57%. China is expected to overtake the United States to become the world’s biggest emitter in 2007, while India becomes the third-biggest emitter by around 2015. China’s per-capita emissions almost reach those of OECD Europe by 2030.

source: iea.org

Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, have pledged a total of $750 million to a new fund that will support research in clean technologies, including carbon capture and storage.

“We are part of this world and the consequences of environmental and climatic changes affect our nations and peoples,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, at a news conference in Riyadh.

He said Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, would put up $300 million “to fund a program of scientific research relating to energy, environment and climate change.”

Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates each pledged $150 million to the fund.

“We look forward to seeing producing and consuming countries alike contribute to the program, since it is in the common interest to deal with this issue in the optimal manner,” said Prince Saud.

In a statement following its third summit, OPEC said it would, “Stress the importance of cleaner and more efficient petroleum technologies for the protection of the local, regional and global environment, and the importance of expediting the development of technologies that address climate change, such as carbon capture and storage.”

Carbon capture technology involves trapping carbon dioxide and storing it underground. The technology is still in the development stage, with the U.K. just announcing a project to look into a commercial scale system.

OPEC will not be turning its back on oil. Prince Saud said “the emissions that cause pollution must be addressed so that we control this energy source which will remain important for a long time.”

source: Cleantech

The “Business of Green” and “Green is Gold” are among the phrases finding their way onto the nation’s business pages and into the advertisements of major corporations.

After years of corporate greenwashing, is this wave of corporate greenmania for real? Is it more than hype when the New York Times marks a recent article with the sidebar “The market tells producers: It’s go green or goodbye”?

Well, not if the impetus has to come from stronger regulation or environmentally driven government purchases. Those two pressure points have largely been kept dormant or are de minimis.

When business sees environmental management as saving it money, increasing productivity, becoming more competitive and attracting young talent, the prospect of sustainable policies taking root becomes more likely.

Obviously, it was not always viewed this way by corporate bosses who, not long ago, saw our air, water and soil as their toxic sewers.

There is still a long way to go to “green” the entire supply chain from the mines to the markets.

No corporation illustrates this broad continuum better than the Atlanta-based Interface Corporation — the country’s largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer. In 1994, founder Ray Anderson started his company on its goal as a “restorative enterprise,” which he described as zero net pollution and 100% recycling by 2020. The company is 45 percent there, he estimates.

Anderson speaks figures in his 100 plus lectures around the nation and world. His company’s use of fossil fuel is down 45 percent, net greenhouse gas production is down 60%, while company sales are up 49 percent. Water use is down by a third in its manufacturing and the filling of landfill with waste is down 80%.

“Sustainability,” Anderson told the New York Times, “pays in customer loyalty, employee spent-hard cash,” plus 336 million dollars in savings since 1995.

Anderson is unique in that what he and his team have done is not anecdotal, but system wide in scope. The news is replete with one large company achieving this with lighting or that with their transportation. With Interface, ecological efficiency is across the board.

Since even a stodgy company like General Electric is moving quickly into selling “green” technology as the next profit center, why are the aggregate figures on hydro-carbon use, greenhouse gases still increasing? Because there are no national missions to take these successful examples–these best practices–and make them a mandatory floor for all companies.

I refer to mandatory performance standards by the federal government–not specific design standards–backed up by specifications set by Uncle Sam, who is the buyer of so many products we all use, for its departments and agencies. These include vehicles, building construction, paper and many other goods and services that could be purchased only from solid “green companies.” (See: Forty Ways to Make Government Purchasing Green by Eleanor J. Lewis and Eric Weltman. Available from the Center for the Study of Responsive Law for $10. Mail orders to PO Box 19367 Washington, D.C. 20036.)

Mandatory federal standards and government purchasing specifications brought the people safer cars, higher recycled paper content and greater fuel efficiency for their vehicles and appliances. The deregulation craze of the past twenty-five years ended most of this forward progress.

Moreover, the retarding corporate powers are still going anti-green. They oppose a carbon tax and long overdue upgrades of fuel efficiency and pollution control standards. They want to build dozens of costly, unnecessary, unsafe atomic power plants with no less than 100% federal government loan guarantees.

This overall persistence of corporate intransigence needs to be kept in mind as the blizzard of green announcements by companies continues.

source: AlterNet.org

The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), a trade group, has issued a press release threatening legal action against U.S. biodiesel subsidies, which it claims artificially reduce the price of biodiesel sold in the European market by 120 to 180 Euro per metric ton (approximately $0.60 to $0.90 per gallon) compared to what European producers charge.

Under U.S. law, biodiesel, whether used domestically or exported, is eligible for a $1 per gallon biodiesel mixture credit against U.S. federal fuel excise taxes or federal income taxes so long as it is blended with petroleum-based diesel fuel, and is made from feedstocks that qualify it as “agribiodisesel.” Other feedstocks are eligible only for a $0.50 per gallon credit. In March, the EBB had sent a letter to the European Commission concerning both U.S. and Argentinian biodiesel subsidies. No action appears to have been taken on that letter.

Most European biodiesel is produced from rapeseed, which is the equivalent of canola used in some U.S. and Canadian biodiesel production. Most biodiesel in the United States and Argentina is produced from soybean oil, and European Union standards for biodiesel have typically made it more difficult for soybean-based biodiesel to be imported into the European Union. Nonetheless, the EBB claims that U.S. exports to the European Union have increased from 90,000 metric tons in 2006 to 700,000 metric tons to date in 2007. Total U.S. biodiesel production in 2006 was estimated at one million metric tons, but has increased significantly this year.

The EBB’s press release threatened action both before European antidumping authorities and before the World Trade Organization. The U.S. biodiesel subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2008, but are quite likely to be extended.

Diesel fuel is used far more extensively for passenger cars in Europe than in the United States, and the European Union has a goal of 10 percent use of biofuels by 2020. However, the EBB claims that the U.S. subsidies (which the EBB asserts are also taken advantage of by Asian biodiesel producers who transship through the United States) are shutting down European biodiesel production and making expansion of such production difficult.

source: RenewableEnergyAccess.com

While the trade deficit between the U.S. and China stands at a staggering $230 billion, the U.S. still holds a firm lead in high technologies like biotechnology and nanotechnology. “America excels in high-technology goods, such as biotech and aerospace equipment,” said Dan Ikenson, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, “because it has a large, highly educated workforce with the resources to invest in research and innovation.” However, as China’s wealth expands, and it becomes a middle-class society, it is looking to gain more recognition for innovation and design.

“Green IT” tops the list of 10 strategic technologies for next year, according to the research firm, Gartner. They warn that if businesses don’t improve data center energy efficiency, the government may force them to do so. “Some event somewhere, a popular movie, some shift in election politics, and suddenly you are forced to change dramatically and it comes with little warning,” said their analyst Carl Claunch. “You need to be thinking what to do.”

A Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge has ruled construction of an $80 million Biomedical Sciences Facility cannot proceed without additional study of potential environmental impacts. The 92,300 square foot building planned by the University of California at Santa Cruz is designed to serve students and faculty in chemistry, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and biology, including stem cell research.