3p Contributor: Tom Schueneman
Recent Articles
Autodesk Builds the Sustainable City 2.0
Building a sustainable city – you can’t manage what you don’t measure
The nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is home to the world’s largest database of corporate climate change information. CDP provides thousands of organizations and some of the largest international companies a standardized platform to measure, analyze and report greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and sustainability initiatives.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure is the driving philosophy behind CDP, a philosophy with proven benefits providing companies greater efficiency, lowered costs, and better resource management.
And what is true for leading companies is just as true for cities – right where most of us live.
Understanding COP17′s “Durban Platform”
This post originally published in GlobalWarmingisReal.com
Unwilling to allow the two-week negotiations at the COP17 climate conference in Durban, South Africa, a marathon session lasting 36 hours beyond the scheduled end of the talks, produced the “Durban Platform.”
The document calls for all nations–developed and developing–to negotiate a treaty by 2015 to cut carbon emissions to go into effect by 2020. Nations still adhering to the Kyoto Protocol (fewer countries now that Canada has formally pulled out) will enter a second phase of commitments until the new treaty is ratified and implemented.
The Durban Platform also establishes an infrastructure to administer the global Green Fund, an idea first proposed at the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen two years ago.
UNFCCC Chief Figueres: U.S. is Hamstrung on Climate Change
This video clip and commentary originally appeared on globalwarmingisreal.com
UNFCCC Chairperson Christiana Figueres gave a brief comment to ClimateProgress at COP17 on the negotiating position of the US at the climate conference now at its midway point in Durban, South Africa. Figueres characterized the US as “hamstrung” on its inaction on climate change, saying that awareness needs to be raised in American civil society. Climate action is more than a “historic responsibility”, Figueres said, but also a growing and real part of daily life in America that will significant impact on the health and well-being of all Americans in the coming decades.
Canadian Solar Introduces “Smart Solar Panels”
Canadian Solar will introduce their new line of “intelligrated” solar panels at the Solar Power International conference that kicks off today in Dallas. Starting with the CommercialAC three-phase AC version for commercial installations, the new grid-ready solar panels offer inverter integration and performance monitoring.
The “intelligrated” design combines Canadian Solar’s ELPS high-efficiency panels with integrated new sequenced inverter technology that simplifies system design, offers module-level control, and eliminates the need for central or string inverter and module or string sizing.
Fair Trade for All: Fair Trade Becomes Mainstream
A conversation with Fair Trade USA’s Paul Rice
October is officially Fair Trade Month, and Fair Trade USA founder and CEO Paul Rice is both optimistic and realistic about the impact of Fair Trade certified products for lifting farmers and producers in poor, developing nations out of poverty.
The concept of Fair Trade began in the 1940′s as disparate organizations of shopkeepers and churches in Europe reached out to help impoverished communities to gain access to their wares – mostly handicrafts in the beginning. In the 60′s, sugar was adopted into Fair Trade markets. With the creation in the 80′s of Max Havalaar – a name based on a fictional character from a famous Dutch novel – coffee-pickers achieved representation in Fair Trade markets and the concept began to “get it legs” and quickly expand.
How One School District’s Solar Array Raises Student Test Scores
Getting an education in America isn’t getting any easier. Battling steadily declining budgets, cut programs, and teacher layoffs, public school districts need any advantage they can find to offset many challenges.
The absolute imperative of basic education is beyond dispute. Providing the tools, policies, and money to achieve it are far from assured.
Here comes the sun
School systems, both public and private, are realizing the advantages of incorporating clean tech and sustainability in their development plans. A previous TriplePundit story describes one of the first net-zero school buildings at the private Putney School in Vermont. Today, we look to Antelope Valley Union High School District’s recently commissioned 9.6 megawatt PV solar system. A much-needed project that provides power, reduces costs, and even helps raise test scores and send kids to college.
Mission Motors Electric Superbike Sails Past the Competition
We’ve covered San Francisco-based startup Mission Motors on several occasions over the past couple of years. The electric vehicle company earned its reputation for innovation with the Mission One all-electric motorcycle. In 2009, the Mission One broke the electric motorcycle land speed record, topping 161 mph on Utah’s Bonneville salt flats. But that was just Mission Motors getting revved up.
Net-Zero in Vermont: Putney School a Model for Sustainability
In the unassuming rural community of Putney, Vermont, students and faculty at the Putney School are proud of their new field house. Not only does the new building expand the opportunities for the students at the private high school, it’s also the only net-zero school building in the country, and one of only a handful that are LEED Platinum certified.
The effort exemplifies the holistic approach to the business and art of education that Putney founder Camelita Hinton first adopted for the school more than 75 years ago.
The Built Environment: Inflection and Reflection in the Shadow of Earth Day
Earth Day is over for this year, but what is arguably more important than the day itself is the day after – and the day after that (and the day after that…).
Earth Day serves as the rallying cry calling for the sustained action that drives progressive environmental trends. I spoke last week with Emma Stewart, Senior Manager of AEC Sustainability at Autodesk, to briefly discuss some of her latest thinking about those trends.
Back in 1970, when I was a gawky young lad of 12, jungles in Southeast Asia were denuded with Agent Orange and set ablaze with bombs and Napalm, while rivers burned in the U.S. from the unchecked effluent of industry and growing urbanization.
For me, the original Earth Day is at best a fuzzy memory. Nonetheless my youthful innocence, Earth Day 1970 marked a watershed moment, what Stewart calls an “inflection point” of rapid and substantive change in environmental awareness, policy, and legislation.
James Inhofe Apologizes for Calling Global Warming a Hoax
April fool 2011 :-)
In what might be one of the most remarkable about-faces ever to come from within the beltway, James Inhofe, Senator and minority ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee (R. OKLA), apologized to a stunned Senate chamber for calling climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
“It’s time for leadership in Washington on climate change,” said Inhofe. “To date, I have been an obstacle to that leadership, and that changes today.”
A confused and bewildered Republican leadership called for the Senate Sargent at Arms to restore order – “this man is not who he says he is!” cried Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, accusing Inhofe of being a liberal hollywood stunt double carrying out an evil socialist plot. The befuddled McConnell then made a choking sound, suddenly blurting out the word “Hitler!”
Gravity Power Module Revolutionizes Pumped Hydro Energy Storage
Energy storage is arguably the Achilles heal of renewable energy.
Matching the diurnal nature of the wind and the sun with the on-demand, baseload nature of human energy consumption requires energy storage that is scalable to Gigawatts, reliable, efficient, economically viable, and environmentally benign.
The only method of energy storage with any significant deployment is pumped hydro, with more than 120,000 megawatts installed globally. But the last large scale pumped hydro project went online more than thirty years ago, and almost all of that capacity is used as “peaking” power for baseload sources like coal, oil, and nuclear power.
Other technologies, such as batteries, thermal energy, or compressed air storage are considered candidates for renewable energy storage. But these solutions can be costly, difficult to scale to grid-sized operations, and are fraught with environmental concerns. And so it is with conventional pumped hydro.
Typically, a large scale pumped hydro project requires an investment of up to $3 billion dollars before investors see a return, taking up to fifteen years, with an equally large environmental footprint requiring two large bodies of water at differing elevations.
There are some visionary plans for the pumped hydro concept, such as the Green Power Island from Danish architectural firm Gottlieb Paludan. But such grand schemes remain purely conceptual and thus far fail to address the core issue: pumped-hydro remains environmentally and economically costly.
Gravity Power LLC, a startup based in Santa Barbara, California, has a plan to turn pumped hydro on its head – literally.
Tech Driving Behavioral Change: Talking with Autodesk U’s Emma Stewart
Notes from Autodesk University
The breadth and depth of the technological reach on display at Autodesk University, particularly for a first-timer such as myself, is, for lack of a less hackneyed phrase, overwhelming.
But what is important to eventually grasp at such an event is the transformative power of technology to drive behavioral – and thus societal – change. Skeptics of that idea can ponder what sort of smartphone they were using fifteen years ago, or ten, or five (or even that “smartphone” makes it past spell check). We live in a world driven by Moore’s Law.
Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program Helps Create Urbee – the First 3D Printed Car
At 200 miles-per-gallon, the Urbee hybrid-electric car is touted by some as the “greenest car in the world.” But what might truly set the Urbee apart is that instead of building a prototype the “old-fashioned” way, Canadian design firm KOR EcoLogic printed one from a computer.
The Urbee is the first car produced from a 3D printer using advanced design tools provided by Autodesk through their Clean Tech Partner Program, which grants licenses to early stage clean-tech firms to suites of Autodesk design software worth up to $150,000 for only $50.
On the Ground at Autodesk University
Interested in attending Autodesk University? See below for information on access codes for a Virtual Premier Pass to the conference.
I arrived to a cold, dry, and colorful Las Vegas strip late Sunday to attend the annual global meeting known as Autodesk University. The irony of my invitation to explore the important work Autodesk does for creating a sustainable built environment is not lost in this town known for its excess and “secrets” that remain within the confines of the strip.
The point at Autodesk University is not to leave secrets, however, but to spread the word on what Autodesk calls The Power of the Possible.
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