If you take a bunch of dead trees and grasses and shrubs and bury them underground and wait a couple of hundred million years, you get coal: a highly concentrated energy source which has the unfortunate side effect of releasing very large proportion of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But what if you simply took those same trees and shrubs and burned them directly without waiting all that time? You would get biomass, a much less concentrated, but also less harmful source of fuel.
Biomass is less harmful, because the carbon it releases into the air had only just been pulled out of the atmosphere during the life of the plants involved and would be released anyway when the plants decomposed (along with some additional methane). It is bulky, but if you have a plentiful source of it and a means to transport it, it can be a very practical alternative to fossil fuels.
The University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, home to roughly 42,000 students has made the decision to convert their coal powered Charter Street Heating and Cooling Steam Plant to run on biomass.
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Tesco Opens World’s First Zero Carbon Supermarket, Pledges $156 M to UK Green Economy
Last week, Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, opened the world’s first zero carbon supermarket.
The store has no net carbon footprint and exports any extra electricity generated back to the national grid.
Located in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, this new supermarket boasts several eco-friendly features, including:
- A combined heat and power plant which runs on bio fuels from renewable sources
- Timber framing derived from sustainable sources rather than steel (which significantly reduced the carbon footprint of construction)
- Interior lighting that dims as the natural daylight increases, and skylights that allow daylight on to the sales floor
- LED lights in the parking lot and gas station (This is the UK’s first LED-lit parking lot.)
- Rainwater collection facilities on the roof which provide water for use in the car wash and to flush store toilets
- Refrigerant gases in the fridges, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that have virtually no environmental impact
- Solar-powered street lights and crossing signals
- Additional energy-efficient equipment, such as low energy bakery ovens
Is Climate Change Legislation Dead in 2010?
The latest chatter on the Hill is that climate legislation is not likely to pass this year. High jobless numbers, financial reform and the health care debate continue to thwart efforts focused on the environment. It is possible that the Senate will settle for an energy-only bill and call it a day. The likelihood of this strategy was echoed by comments made by President Obama on Tuesday February 2, 2010 at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire. The President said that he would be open to the possibility of the Senate passing an energy bill without a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program. These comments have put him at odds with Senate Democrats who have insisted that an energy bill be combined with a climate change bill.
The idea of splitting up the energy bill, which was passed last year by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is a departure from the strategy advocated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid wants an energy bill with a renewable electricity standard, efficiency standards and other provisions to be combined with a cap-and-trade bill. The centerpiece of that bill is a renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require electric utilities to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021.
Despite Recession, Home Depot Keeps on Giving
Last week’s announcement from the Home Depot Foundation suggests that even with sales slumps and layoffs, the nation’s largest retailer of home improvement products still views charitable giving as good business.
The company is expecting lower revenues for 2009 when results are announced in February, and for the third consecutive January is cutting its workforce. Still, the Home Depot Foundation gave $74 million to 5,300 nonprofits last year, according to the recent announcement, an almost 50 percent increase from 2008.
“The Foundation has not been affected by how the broader economic pressures have affected our company,” said Home Depot spokesperson, Paula Drake in an email to Triple Pundit.
In fact, during an economic downturn may be the best time for companies to burnish their reputations through cause marketing campaigns, according to Wendy Liebmann, chief executive at WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting company. In a recent NY Times article, Ms. Liebmann referenced a list of 10 reasons shoppers consider a store their favorite, and supporting “the community or worthwhile causes” came in number 8 on the list. “The key, as we come out of this recession, is that we don’t trust many people anymore,” Ms. Liebmann added, so “retailers feel the need to present themselves as good citizens” to counter that.
Nominate A Pioneering, Successful, Green Restaurant!
“Does green really sell,” is the question I am most consistently asked. Amanda’s is one of my favorite answers to this question. It is a restaurant that its founder, Amanda West, defines as “Whole Foods meets In–N-Out Burger.” It is also likely that Amanda’s represents the future of the fast food industry.
America is a fast food nation with approximately 200,000 fast food restaurants generating national annual revenues exceeding $120 billion (Hoovers). While the names of internationally branded companies like McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s or KFC dominate our collective consciousness the industry is actually highly fragmented with the top 50 sized companies accounting for only 25% of sales.
And the entire restaurant industry is under tremendous stress during this recession. A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that restaurant insolvencies in the first quarter of 2009 were 33% higher than the last quarter of 2008.
In comparison, Amanda’s opened its doors in July 2008 and has achieved year over year sales increases while three nearby restaurants have been forced to close. The Secret Green Sauce™ for Amanda’s success is healthy convenience food offered at competitive prices. My first meal at Amanda’s was a veggieburger and apple “fries” that cost $6. It was my first veggieburger and I was stunned at how good it tasted. The apple ”fries” were actually a sliced raw apple diced to look like French fries and served with a honey yogurt dipping sauce rather than sugar-rich ketchup. The meal looked like fast food, tasted great and was priced similar to what I would normally pay at Wendy’s.
Groups Sue California Over Low Carbon Fuel Standard
Last week the American Trucking Association (ATA) and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (NPRA) filed a lawsuit against California’s low-carbon fuel mandate, which calls for the state’s petroleum dependence to be reduced by 20 percent by 2020. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted the standard last April. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Fresno, claims the mandate violates federal laws regarding interstate commerce and makes the cost of doing business too expensive. It is the third suit filed in the last two months challenging the mandate.
“We felt the need to challenge it because it will increase the cost of fuel produced in California,” said Rich Moskowitz, vice president of the ATA. “A new clean-diesel truck that emits virtually no particulate matter is about $100,000,” he said. “A natural gas engine adds a 40- to 80-thousand-dollar premium on top of that.”
Is Walmart’s Sustainability Consortium A Genuine Effort To Develop Better Products?
Walmart is certainly not a stranger to controversy and criticism, and neither is its attempt to develop sustainability standards for products. Last summer the world’s largest retailer announced plans last summer to develop a Sustainability Index which would serve as a single data source for evaluating a product’s sustainability. The Sustainability Index initiative then launched the Sustainability Consortium, a group representing governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic and business interests to develop standards which can be used to rate the sustainability of products.
The Consortium’s website states that it “develops transparent methodologies, tools and strategies to drive a new generation of products and supply networks that address environmental, social and economic imperatives.” .The Consortium’s website also states that it “advocates for a transparent process and system, not individuals or organizations.” However, the Consortium does not support third party-rating systems such as EPEAT. As Treehugger.com put it, the Consortium “decided to take matters into their own hands and push for consumer outreach on electronics themselves.”
Ford Unveils Electric Transit Connect, Focused on Fleet Owners
Ford announced today that an all-electric version of its Transit Connect small cargo van will roll off production lines and into vehicle fleets later this year.
The Transit Connect has been, so far, a hit for Ford, selling well in Europe, where it debuted before coming state-side last year in a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder gas-powered engine that gets 19 miles to the gallon in the city and 24 mpg highway.
Will fleet owners embrace this EV version? That will likely depend on its yet-unannounced list price. Christopher DeMorro at Gas 2.0 estimates that Ford will give it an attractive price point—maybe as low as $35,000—to attract fleet buyers. The gas version of the Connect goes for around $22,000, and it’s hard to imagine that fleet owners would go for the electric, zero emissions version if it costs more than twice that—although the cost of electricity will be a determining factor, certainly. In the Northwest, where hydro power generates some of the cheapest energy in the nation, fleet owners are in a better position than those in places with higher or more volatile energy costs.
Hydrogen is Not The Miracle Fuel of the Future
BoingBoing.net is reporting today on a tabletop “hydrogen power station” that produces hydrogen from water using a standard power outlet and costs around $200. While this may sound wonderful on the surface, it merely illustrates how the notion of a “hydrogen economy” is really a myth.
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: hydrogen is not a energy resource. Hydrogen does not exist naturally in any sufficient quantities to make it a viable energy source, at least on this planet. To get hydrogen in any useful quantities, it must be extracted from natural gas, water or biomass, and all of these result in a net loss of energy. It is more efficient to use these fuels in their original forms.
Hydrogen is more like a battery, an energy storage medium. Unfortunately, (for practical purposes) it is a very impractical battery, with an extremely low energy-to-volume ratio. According to Wikipedia, “The energy density per unit volume of both liquid hydrogen and compressed hydrogen gas at any practicable pressure is significantly less than that of traditional fuel sources, although the energy density per unit fuel mass is higher.”
To be fair, fossil fuels are only energy storage mediums as well, but their energy was accumulated over millions of years, and is readily extracted now in a compact form. Neither hydrogen nor fossil fuels are energy sources, because the energy does not come from them, it came from the sun, the only real energy source we have.
The E-Waste Market: The Good, Bad and the Ugly
While technology has become more affordable and readily available, discarded electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste, has become a great big problem. That shiny new gadget you buy today will probably be obsolete tomorrow. So what happens to all that electronic waste?
According to a 60 Minutes segment, an estimated 130,000 computers are thrown out every day in the US. In 2005, four billion pounds of e-waste was tossed out in the United States. While most is either incinerated or dumped in landfills, some of the waste that is “recycled” actually ends up being exported to developing countries. Workers, often paid low wages, process the materials in primitive conditions, putting the workers and the environment at risk.
2010 SuperBowl Ads: Audi Green Police Is As Green as it Gets?
Let’s face it, the Superbowl is watched by more Americans than any other single TV event. Personally, my guess is that at least half of the people who watch it only watch it for the famous Superbowl ads. They’re usually humorous (and this year, somewhat controversial, with the addition of the ad for an anti-abortion campaign starring Tim Tebow and the simultaneous censoring of an ad for a gay dating website).
This year, the familiar faces–beer companies, car makers, sellers of snack foods…the usual suspects–signed on for large sums of money to advertise their products. During the third quarter of the game, something occurred to me about this year’s commercials. None of them, up to that point, had even mentioned sustainability. I tried to search online but couldn’t really find anything relevant, but I seem to remember that in last year’s Superbowl ads, companies trumpeting their sustainability records, achievements, or product features, especially car ads featuring “best in class fuel efficiency.”
I had just finished a diatribe at the Superbowl party I was attending about whether the world had completely turned off to sustainability, when the first ‘green’ ad emerged. A customer at a checkout counter is asked, “Paper or plastic?” and when he chooses plastic, he is arrested and taken away by the “Green Police.”
I found myself quickly regretting my karmic intrusion into the Superbowl programming, as the ad quickly turned into yet another perhaps well-intentioned ad that casts environmentalists, frankly, as wack-jobs. I have to admit, I really started paying attention to see which companies had decided to advertise their product this way…
China Now World Leader in Smart Grid Investment
Just imagine if we were only now building our first electric infrastructure. Of course that would mean that we’d be decades behind our other modern counterparts. But it would also mean that we’d be in a position to build it using the very latest and best technology. That is exactly the position China is in today. And thanks to its thriving export business, it has the means to do it right. This is a good thing, since bringing so many people up to a modern standard will bankrupt the planet unless truly significant innovations are made at every step along the way to ensure the highest possible efficiency.
China is preparing to invest $7.3 billion this coming year in smart grid technology, edging out the $7.2 billion in U.S. investments (Source: Zpryme). In fact, China is now spending more on its smart grid than it is on power generation.
Why Electric Vehicles Worry California Power Regulators
Pylons; Photo by Net_Efekt
Though historically high gas prices provide a strong market demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in California, it is the state with an electric grid that is the least able to support these cars. With automakers set to launch at least a dozen EV models by 2012, California’s electricity regulators are scrambling to respond to the expected power needs, with policy to accommodate the emerging, private sector infrastructure required for widespread EV use. Meanwhile, car company CEOs are holding their breath–while also optimistically moving forward despite, regulatory uncertainty.
The $10 Trillion Awareness Customer
I participated recently in a dialogue with thought-leaders on whether “green” or “renewable” or “sustainability” or “restoration” or “regeneration” is the right word to describe the sea change in technology, business processes and consumer behavior now taking place in the U.S. All the participating thought-leaders were frustrated that these words were either tainted with politics, or too limiting or too futuristic to capture the dynamic spectrum of change taking place in our society and economy.
So this week I am writing a five part series exploring the nuances of what it means to our economy, our jobs, our communities and environment as America embraces a sustainable future. This first article outlines the market research on a new awareness that is growing among consumers. In the next two articles, I’ll profile two businesses that are successfully embracing these concepts to achieve year-over-year sales growth. The final two articles will profile two communities–one on each coast–that have embraced this movement to grow their local economies while also preserving their environment.
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