Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Four teams from Switzerland, Germany, Australia and South Korea this week launched a solar-powered, emissions-free 80-day around-the-world race from Geneva to draw attention to electric vehicles. The 18,000-mile Zero Race will run through Moscow, Shanghai, Vancouver and San Francisco before stopping in Cancun, Mexico, for a United Nations Climate Conference, and then the vehicles will be shipped to Portugal and end the race in Geneva next January. Two vehicles are battery-powered scooters and the other two are custom sedans. The Zero Race is organized by Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer, the first person to go around the world in a solar-powered vehicle.

Iceland to become world leader in electric cars? A Forbes article suggests Iceland could be the first to make electric vehicles the default national transportation. Three quarters of the island nation's 317,000-plus population lives within 37 miles of the capital Reykjavik. Forbes says rural areas could probably be wired with just 15 fast-charging stations. "That, coupled with with the fact that 80 percent of  Iceland's energy is cheaply produced renewable (from geothermal and hydro) should give you a good idea why this is the ideal test bed for electric vehicles," the article says. Iceland has an agreement with Mitsubishi to deliver i-MiEV all-electric cars to the island with a claimed range of 80 to 100 miles.

The greenest college in the land is small Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., according to a survey by the Sierra Club's Sierra magazine. The college, with 820 undergrads, offers an extensive environmental studies program, burns wood chips and methane from cow manure for heat and electricity, and aims to become carbon neutral. The magazine sent an 11-page questionnaire to 900 colleges and universities to find the greenest institutions and received 162 responses. After Green Mountain, the top 10 colleges based on criteria from energy sources to financial investments included Dickinson College (Pennsylvania), Evergreen State College (Washington), University of Washington, Stanford University (California), University of California-Irvine, Northland College (Wisconsin), Harvard University (Massachusetts), College of the Atlantic (Maine), and Hampshire College (Massachusetts). 
 

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Global Warming could be a major contributor to the demise of the rainforest as we know it. A new study in the journal Conservation Letters claims by the year 2100, nearly half of the plant and animal life in rainforests will not be able to exist as they do today because of deforestation and climate change. The study suggests the Amazon Basin alone could see changes in biodiversity for nearly 80 percent of the region. The report consists of studies done in Central and South America, Asia and Africa.

Just about a week after roughly 300 of the world’s top climate scientists revealed that they have all concluded man-made global warming is “undeniable,” the Arctic discovery of a well-preserved British ship has some oil companies looking past shrinking glaciers and other the negative impacts of global warming to see a lucrative silver lining. Canadian parks officials say they were only able to locate the vessel, which sank 155 years ago, because the ocean is almost completely ice free. Shortly after the ship was found, three huge oil companies announced they are joining forces to more efficiently look for oil and natural gas deposits under the sea close to where the boat was located off Canadian shores.

UN climate talks aimed at curbing the threat of global warming seem to be moving in the wrong direction after a week-long session in Germany. Even as evidence mounts that continued warming could yield deadly impacts, negotiators are reporting that chances for a compromise are giving way to finger pointing. Record global temperatures, forest fires in Russia and deadly floods in Pakistan "are all consistent with the kind of changes we could expect from climate change, and they will get worse if we don't act quickly," said the top U.S. negotiator. "Unfortunately, what we have seen is that some countries are walking back from the progress made in Copenhagen.”

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment  caught our attention this week:

Now that the 2010 FIFA World Cup has departed South Africa, so have those vuvuzelas that trumpeted a steady din at every soccer match. Where did they go? To the recycling world, reports PRW.com, which covers plastics news. The vuvuzelas -- 800,000 were sold in South Africa -- are likely to be recycled into plastic park benches and buckets. Many will be kept as souvenirs, of course, but those discarded will be collected for recycling before they enter landfill sites because the material is too valuable to waste, says a consultant for the Plastic Convertors Association. Cup winner Spain, however, may still be celebrating with its vuvuzelas.  

Raceways are a new testing ground for the latest electric vehicle technology. Last Sunday, racers, designers and innovators put EVs and motorcycles through their paces before engineers and entrepreneurs, reports Earth2Tech on the REFUEL EV race and time trials at the Laguna Seca track near Monterey. Infineon Raceway north of San Francisco also put on the first zero-emissions motorcycle race in the U.S. in May, the Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix U.S. Championship. With Tesla Motors' new electric roadster stirring a lot of interest among fans of performance cars, perhaps it won't be too long before the Indianapolis 500 launches an all-electric race at the old brickyard.

The big box IKEA chain is the first U.S. retailer to drop incandescent light bulbs from its U.S. stores, beginning August 1, and says it will be incandescent-free by next January 1 and ahead of federal legislation to phase out incandescent bulbs beginning in 2012. The company said compact fluorescent bulbs are the most popular bulb at IKEA and the chain also offers more expensive LED lamps, which are 70 percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs. The company says that beginning this fall it will also carry a halogen bulb to be used in a standard light socket.

Posted by: Katie Romans

Here's another "eco" to add to your list of buzzwords about the Smart Grid, as demonstrated in GE's Ecomagination event in San Francisco yesterday: ecosystem. As in, it will take one to build the Smart Grid.

At the event, Vice President of GE Ecomagination Steve Fludder described the "eco" in GE's idea of Ecomagination as compelling eco-nomical solutions for customers with eco-logical benefits.

GE didn't just talk about these solutions yesterday. It announced plans to commit $200 million globally to accelerate power grid technology through open collaboration -- open collaboration by a community of players that make up a sort of Smart Grid ecosystem.

Players in this Smart Grid ecosystem span technology companies, energy utilities, venture capitalists and government agencies. Representatives from each of these areas participated in a panel discussion at yesterday's event about accelerating clean energy deployment. They covered topics from what technologies and power sources "count," to the roles of government and capitalism in deploying clean energy solutions, to models of deployment used by other countries.

When the topic turned to deployment, PG&E Corporation's CEO Peter Darbee said the company has deployed six million SmartMeters to date, with the goal of deploying 11 to 12 million total. PG&E's SmartMeter deployment lays down the necessary infrastructure for the Smart Grid ecosystem.

From here, technology companies can layer the infrastructure with additional offerings. Director of Energy Initiatives for Google Dan Reicher talked about how the Google PowerMeter allows customers to see their real-time energy use remotely. He indicated that this technology can even be used with GE's Nucleus Home Energy Monitor. Many others are working on this kind of software, such as Microsoft's Hohm, which is a free Web-based beta application.

Enter the venture capitalists that fund the Smart Grid technology companies. General Partner of Foundation Capital Paul Koontz discussed the amount of capital needed to bring forward proven technologies that are also scalable. The concept of scale, which is key to affordability and widespread deployment, also makes venture capital a requirement for many small, start-up companies. 

Finally, government agencies such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)have a role in helping to ensure that innovators take enough risks to get technologies to the Smart Grid ecosystem. To that end, Director of ARPA-E Dr. Arun Majumdar explained that his agency provides hundreds of millions of dollars in grants every year. In fact, just yesterday, the agency announced 43 grants totaling $92 million for the grid.

Looking ahead, all panel participants agreed that electric vehicles could be a game changer for Smart Grid if we can acheive widespread adoption. It will take an ecosystem.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Oil is still leaking in the Gulf of Mexico, and British Petroleum officials say they will not be able to stop it until August - prompting President Obama to vow to fight for climate change legislation to pass in the Senate. In a speech made in Pittsburgh this week, the president said the private sector should pay some kind of price for its carbon emissions. He also said he will be pushing to make American homes, businesses and vehicles more energy efficient. “It means tapping into our natural gas reserves, and moving ahead with our plan to expand our nation's fleet of nuclear power plants,” said Obama. “And it means rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development." 

Global warming is being linked to hundreds of deaths in India as scientists claim the northern part of the country is in the midst of the hottest summer since record keeping began in the late 1800s. Forecasters predict temperatures will continue to rise to close to 122 degrees Fahrenheit and they expect the number of deaths to go up right along side the mercury levels. Hospitals are taking in roughly 300 people a day suffering from heat stroke and officials say the figures are only a fraction of the total as most of the casualties are found in remote rural villages. In addition, wildlife is suffering, with bats, crows and peacocks dying from the heat. Even India's northern hill stations – historically a refuge from the sweltering summers – are reporting temperatures far above the seasonal average.

A report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests global warming is a severe threat to Northern California's two great marine sanctuaries and nearby coastal regions. The report states that as the sea level continues to rise and the ocean water continues to warm, the migratory patterns of marine mammals will be disrupted and coastal storms and erosion will be more severe. The report mentions that sea level at the mouth of San Francisco Bay has already risen nearly 8 inches in the past century and noted that scientists estimate a sea level rise off the coast of California of 29 inches in the next 40 years and 75 inches by the end of the century. It also claims some ocean species are moving northward. Gray whales have been observed giving birth as far north as the waters off Monterey County, the report states. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

A poem about sewage treatment plants? Sixth grader Jeffrey Weiner was one of the winners in New York City's Water Resources and Poetry Contest, sponsored for 24 years by the city's Department of Environmental Protection. The contest for children in fourth, fifth and sixth grades raises awareness about the importance of the quality of the city's drinking water and its water supply and treatment systems. Here's Jeffrey's poem:

Treatment at wastewater plants must be quite quick,
To remove the pollutants so you don't get sick.
In a mere seven hours, the job is complete,
Compared to weeks in nature to perform the same feat!

Concord, Mass., has outlawed the sale of bottled water, the first U.S. municipality to adopt the ban. The city says the bottles are not reusable, contribute too much waste and use too much energy to manufacture. The International Bottled Water Association is threatening legal action to reverse the measure. The industry group says that based on figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic water bottles are recycled at a rate of 31 percent, making them the single most recycled product. The Concord ban is to go into effect next January 1.

Hewlett-Packard researchers see opportunities to power data centers with biogas extracted from livestock waste for companies like Google and Microsoft. "Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship," says HP scientist Chandrakant Patel, adding data centers in rural areas will give dairy farmers new opportunities, the New York Times reports. HP doesn't have immediate plans for a biogas-powered data center.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The first zero-emissions motorcycle race in the U.S. debuts on Sunday at the West Coast Moto Jam at Infineon Raceway north of San Francisco. The Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix U.S. Championship is an all-electric 11-lap, 25-mile race with no roar and no emissions but riders say there is plenty of speed. "I felt I was going just as fast as on a gas bike," says Shawn Higbee. Electric motorcycles cost 30-40 percent more than gas bikes but cheaper in the long run, says Raul Inarritu, an executive for electricmotorsport.com. "They need a lot less service. The only moving parts are two bearings and a chain."

New York City is developing a "solar map" to determine its solar energy potential. An airplane  equipped with a laser system called Lidar for light detection and ranging takes pictures of the surface terrain and structures. The images help planners figure how much solar power can be produced on each roof, says the New York Times' Green blog. Solar arrays could generate an estimated one-fifth of the electricity consumed by the city's 8 million residents. San Francisco and Boston also have online tools to measure buildings' potentials for solar energy.

Hospitals are energy hogs, consuming 2 1/2 times the energy in a similar-sized commercial  building, but they're taking steps to go green. Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is one of only four U.S. hospitals that are Gold LEED certified and fewer than 100 hospitals have LEED certification. The Rush hospital says it has launched a number of green initiatives including a strong recycling program -- for paper, glass, plastic and cans -- and it also converts kitchen grease to biodiesel fuel, vehicle and machine oil back to fuel products, and buys electronics from a supplier that includes recycling services. Last year, the hospital diverted 898 tons of materials from landfills, Reuters reports.
 

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

My colleague Joe Molica provided this latest dispatch in the long-running family saga of Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil:

Shortly after noon today, the offspring of Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil, the media-savvy peregrine falcons that have been squatting on top of the PG&E headquarters building in downtown San Francisco, were banded, soon before their first flights. The aluminum bands, which note their 77 Beale St. home address, don’t interfere with the young birds’ lives but allow scientists to learn more about the amazing comeback story of these animals, the fastest on earth.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Climate change critics are gaining momentum in the press and recently released Gallup polling results show the public is becoming more skeptical of man-made global warming. But the scientific consensus on the credibility and danger of the issue remains steadfast. Volumes of evidence compiled by America’s leading research agencies – including NOAA, NASA, the Pentagon and the National Science Foundation – asserts global warming over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. Their research claims “the warming of the climate is unequivocal.”

Australian researchers claim science proves man-made global warming is changing an animal’s life-cycle. A recent University of Melbourne study found that because of a rise in temperature attributed to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions by humans, the common brown butterfly now emerges from its cocoon 10 days earlier than it did 65 years ago. Scientists have previously observed that biological events are happening progressively earlier in spring over the past few decades but this study is the first time the actions man can be scientifically linked as a contributing cause.

The buzz of the neon lights may hum a little softer next weekend as Las Vegas joins many other cities around the globe in preparing for the event dubbed “Earth Hour.” The event's organizers say the goal is for “hundreds of millions of people” to turn off the lights for one hour – at the same time – to call for action on climate change. This year will mark the third consecutive campaign and events are set to take place in succession at 8:30 p.m. local time all over the world. As for the energy saved by turning off the lights of the Vegas strip, the local utility NV Energy, claims last year’s event saved 65 megawatts, roughly as much as the yearly energy consumption of 10 average homes in the PG&E service territory.
 

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Recent polls show public support for global warming is declining but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is denouncing warming deniers calling them “anti-science, flat-earth climate skeptics.” Brown will co-chair the United Nations High Level Advisory group on Climate Change Financing.  The group aims to raise cash to halt deforestation, encourage low-carbon development and adapt to rising sea levels, extreme weather events and higher temperatures.

President Obama wants to develop a new government agency that would focus specifically on Climate Change. During his campaign, he promised the American people he would devote a good portion of his administration’s time to fighting global warming. Obama announced that in an effort to live up to that promise, he was ordering the creation of a new organization. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Service will actually be a branch of the existing NOAA but will have its own director and specific agenda.

For the next couple weeks, Olympic hopefuls will adorn their colors and put their boots into bindings in the mountains overlooking Vancouver. And they’ll be racing and jumping towards medals in mostly man-made snow. January of 2010 was the warmest January on record in Vancouver, with temperatures averaging 44.8 degrees. This is in stark contrast to recent snow storms on the east coast of the United States, which have fueled the fire for global warming skeptics. Scholars of climate science argue that neither example is proof of anything.  Instead they would point to longer term trends showing a gradual warming of the whole earth over the last thirty years.