Archive for the ‘Green Economy’ Category
June 2nd, 2009
Air New Zealand’s Biofuel Flight Cuts Emissions By 65%
Stumble it!
By Jerry James Stone, courtesy of Gas2.o
At the Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington, Air New Zealand’s Chief Pilot Captain David Morgan announced the company’s findings on a test flight from last December. Powered by a combination of biofuel and jet fuel, the test resulted in a fuel savings of 1.2%. It also cut CO2 emissions by over 60%!
While a 1.2% fuel savings doesn’t seem like much, that is over 1 ton of fuel!
The test was conducted using a commercial 747-400 fitted with Rolls Royce engines. Rolls Royce had certified the fuel — a 50:50 blend of standard Jet A1 fuel and synthetic paraffinic kerosene derived from jatropha oil.
“We’ve proven the technical capability of biofuel as a drop-in replacement,” said Bill Glover, Managing Director of Environmental Strategy for Boeing. “It meets all jet fuel requirements and then some.”
The biofuel was produced from Jatropha seeds grown on “environmentally sustainable farms.” A second generation biofuel, jatropha is grown on land that doesn’t compete with food. It requires almost no care and very little water. Another major benefit of jatropha is that, due to its ability to take hold in harsh wastelands, it can be used to help stop erosion in these areas and reclaim them for agricultural production.
Popularity: 6% [?]
May 21st, 2009
Hurray for New CSA in LA! Local, Organic Produce
We’ve written many times in the past about CSAs– Community Supported Agricultural cooperatives. These are programs where community members support local farms by ordering their local produce in bulk. You can find hundreds of CSAs across the country at Local Harvest.
Well I had bemoaned for a long while the absence of a CSA in central Los Angeles. Can you imagine!? A city this big!? There were places to the North and South and, yes, they would deliver– but at a pretty steep price. Now there is a new CSA that is dishing out delicious fruits and veggies right at Fairfax High School at Fairfax and Melrose. Hurray! I went today and got a glorious bag bursting with grapefruit, oranges, peaches, cherries, spinach, cilantro, onions, broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, and more. All for $25– take that Whole Foods! I am in organic food heaven.
The mastermind behind this new CSA is Sara Marie Paul, who is a dyed-in-the-wool organic vegan. You can get your order in to her by each Wednesday at 7PM but emailing here: Sara [@] CSACalifornia.org. (Also check out the CSA California website here.) Then you can pick up your food at Fairfax High on Thursday between 2-4PM. A portion of proceeds also benefit the development of the Fairfax High School Garden Project!
Popularity: 3% [?]
May 18th, 2009
ZigBee-Powered Smart Grids: Coming To A Home Near You?
You can’t read a green-focused blog or periodical these days without seeing something about smart grids. Smart transmission grids from wind farms to cities, smart distribution grids from our local utilities, or even smart energy networks at home. The advertised benefits are many - the ability to move renewable energy from remote sources to urban areas, less energy waste in transmission, and the ability of utilities to optimize energy consumption across their grids all the way down to (and into) your home. To make this last leg work, utilities will need to be able to talk to your appliances, climate control systems, and other home energy devices in order to manage their energy production in a smart and low-carbon way. (For an entertaining and informative if optimistic description of how this might work some day, check out Chapter Ten of Thomas Friedman’s great book Hot, Flat and Crowded).
Enter ZigBee, a relatively new wireless technology that is a frontrunner in the race to network and control all of your home environmental systems. Now, if you’re like me, your first question might be whether we really need another wireless technology. As if WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, CDMA, GSM, and the many other protocols out there aren’t enough already! But ZigBee has several major attributes that DO make it an important piece of the puzzle. The ZigBee protocol is optimized to pass relatively small amounts of data between devices efficiently - not great for streaming real-time voice conversations or music, but perfect for sending a thermostat setpoint or refrigerator temperature to the smart meter outside your home. The key benefits are that ZigBee transmitters are very simple and inexpensive to build AND they require very little power. They cost fractions of what a Bluetooth connection would cost, and can be powered for months or years on the smallest of batteries. This is the key advantage - they can be integrated into almost any point of home energy use (switches, outlets, lights, appliances) without requiring a significant power source and without driving up the price.
A home full of ZigBee-networked devices could be the termination point for the developing smart grid. All of your home energy users would be networked to a centralized controller or your PC, and you could see and change energy usage throughout your home from your office or cell phone. You could program lights and outlets to turn off if a room is unoccupied, or if electricity prices increased during a hot day. You could turn on your heating system and lights before arriving home on a cold winter’s night. And your utility could shut down or delay certain systems (with your pre-approval, of course) if it faced a day of peak demand across your local electricity grid.
So, if you consider yourself an early adopter of green technology, can you get your hands on any worthwhile ZigBee-powered devices? Unfortunately, there aren’t that many consumer-oriented ZigBee products available yet, but that’s likely to change. Utilities are already beginning to install ZigBee-enabled smart electricity meters on homes and apartments throughout the country, so expect to see products that communicate with them soon. Keep your eyes open for products from these leading ZigBee-related companies:
- Tendril. Tendril is a Boulder-based smart grid company that is launching a full line of residential products, including the Vantage Internet portal, the Insight home energy monitor, the Set Point thermostat and Volt wall outlets. They’re not available at retail yet, but they might be available through your utility if they happen to have a smart grid pilot program.
- Cisco Systems. Cisco is the world’s largest networking hardware company, and just today they announced the outlines of their plans to enter the smart grid market. They stated the intention to enter the residential market without mentioning any specific plans. But Cisco’s successful forays into the small business and residential networking markets after initially focusing on corporate markets (via big steps like acquiring Linksys) suggests they’ll launch major initiatives soon.
- Greenbox. Greenbox will provide a web-based solution that allows you to manage your home’s energy usage and environmental footprint from one place.
- GE and other major appliance manufacturers. The major electronics companies haven’t announced many residential smart grid plans yet, but they’re clearly a big piece of the overall puzzle. Look for ZigBee in a refrigerator or washing machine near you soon.
Popularity: 2% [?]
May 14th, 2009
Obama’s 2010 Budget to Increase EPA Funding by 34 Percent
Written by Amanda Wills, courtesy of Earth911
The Obama administration announced its proposed budget for the fiscal year 2010 which includes a significant boost in funding for the EPA. The $10.5 billion funding will be a 34 percent increase from 2009’s $7.8 billion in funding.
“It takes significant strides to ensure that our air, land, and water are safe and clean,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in her May 7 speech. “And it significantly improves accountability and transparency, ensuring fiscal responsibility at a time when every dollar counts.”
So what’s the EPA’s plan for the extra money? According to Jackson, $3.9 billion will go toward improving the nation’s water and wastewater infrastructure. Jackson says the funding represents a Obama’s dedication to improving the environment.
“EPA’s new budget reflects the President’s commitment to growing a clean energy economy while protecting human health and the environment,” Jackson said.
EPA’s other plans include $475 million for the Great Lakes Initiative, $17 million for creating a greenhouse gas registry and $1.3 billion to clean up eligible hazardous waste sites, which is part of the Superfund site initiative.
Beginning in 2011, the government will reinstate the Superfund tax on businesses, generating $1 billion a year in revenue.
The new budget will also create jobs. The EPA plans to have enough money to hire 30 additional enforcement staff members in its Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program.
“We see remarkable opportunities to create green jobs,” Jackson said. “We see new growth in communities that are cleaner, healthier places to live, work and invest. And we see new innovations that will protect our planet for the generations to come. EPA has been given extraordinary support, and a revitalized mission. We’re ready to get to work.”
This article was reproduced with the kind permission of Earth 911. For more news and information visit http://earth911.com/.
Popularity: 4% [?]
May 12th, 2009
Recycling Our Way to a More Sustainable Future
Written by Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, courtesy of CleanTechnica.com
San Francisco is a city that knows how to recycle. We work hard to give new life to our paper, bottles, cans and other waste.
New statistics released today show we are keeping 72 percent of all discards from going to the landfill – up from 70 percent the year before.
That’s a big leap for one year. The most significant gains came from the recycling of material from building sites – due in large part to our 2006 mandatory Construction and Demolition Debris Recovery Ordinance.
By requiring builders to recycle debris from construction projects, we were able to divert tens of thousands of new tons of material away from the landfill. This ordinance is unique in that it doesn’t require deposits or bonds, making it small business-friendly and limiting the amount of bureaucracy needed to implement the program.
When it comes to our recycling programs, we’re always in the development phase. In order to meet our ambitious goal of 75 percent recycling by 2010 and zero waste by 2020, we are constantly looking for additional materials to recycle, and for emerging markets to make use of our recyclables.
A few years back we developed—along with the company Recology, our partner in recycling — an innovative program to collect food scraps and turn them into organic soil. Local farms and vineyards now use this soil to grow crops, which are then sold back to consumers in San Francisco. We close the loop locally.
We’ve also recently started recycling almost all types of plastic. We take everything except plastic bags and Styrofoam. Most of it gets made into plastic molding and bender board.
A seventy-two percent diversion rate from the landfill is something to be proud of, and I congratulate every San Francisco resident, business, and visitor who helped us along the way. But we can’t rest on our laurels, not when there are so many valuable resources still going to the dump.
We recently conducted a waste stream analysis and discovered that about two thirds of the stuff people throw away—half a million tons each year—could have been recycled or turned to compost. If were able to capture everything, we would have a recycling rate of 90 percent.
That’s why I’ve introduced an ordinance that will make it mandatory for everyone —homeowners, businesses, or renters — to use our recycling and composting programs. If we can get food scrap collection service into large apartment buildings that currently don’t have it, we’re going to see another great year for recycling.
On a final note, the flip side to how much you recycle is how little you send to the landfill. Our disposal tonnage is the lowest it’s been in over 30 years. Our recycling programs can and have been implemented in cities around the world. For more info on our recycling programs please visit - http://www.sfenvironment.org/.
Popularity: 5% [?]
