The Future is Green

What is slimy, green, and flies? (Answer - jet fuel made from algae)

On January 7 a Boeing 737-800 owned by Continental Airlines will take off on a flight powered partly by algae. The two-engine plane will use regular jet fuel for one engine and a mix of jet fuel and biofuels made from algae and jatropha for the other. It will be the first flight by a commercial airline using algae as a fuel source.

It is not, however the first flight using biofuels. Air New Zealand flew one of its Boeing 747-400 aircraft from Auckland to Wellington on Tuesday with one engine powered by a 50-50 mix of jet fuel and jatropha oil.

Jatropha oil comes from the abundant seeds of the Jatropha curcas plant, which can grow in marginal soils almost anywhere. Along with switch grass and algae, jatropha is considered one of the most promising sources for biofuel production. Compared to petroleum-produced fuels, biodiesel significantly reduces the emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfates, particulate matter and other harmful gases.

Air travel now generates about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that is expected to double in the next decade. The Air Transport Association , which represents 230 airlines, wants 10 percent of aviation fuel to come from biofuels by 2017.

It's official. You can recycle anything - including sex toys.

 

There's just no end to what you can recycle these days. Dreamworks, a Florida based seller of sex toys has launched a recycling program for erotic paraphernalia. Anyone can send in items that are broken or no longer used as long as they wash them first.

Dreamworks breaks the items down to their component parts and sends rubber, silicone, plastic, small motors and batteries to appropriate recycling centers where they can be turned into things like park benches. (Remember that next time you sit down on a park bench,)

To encourage people to send them items for recycling the company offers a $10 gift card to one of its retail sites for each item received. The sex toy recycling program is part of a company-wide sustainability program.

"If we want to be serious about keeping waste out of landfills and reusing things," said Dreamworks CEO David Kowalski, "we have to include everything, no matter where it's been."

Why a duck?

OK, guys, I swear I'm not making this up. NASA has deployed 90 rubber ducks in an effort to learn whether pools of melted glacier ice are making their way from the Greenland ice cap into the ocean. Affixed to each duck is a label bearing an email address and the words "Science Experiment" and "Reward" written in English, Danish, and Inuit.

The ducks were thought up by Alberto Behar, a robotics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA after the agency lost a sophisticated probe that was sent down one of the holes in the glacier called moulins, which are believed to be caused by global warming.

The work is part of ongoing studies by NASA and others to determine the effects of climate change on sea levels.

I just have one question. Why a duck?

Plumbing fixtures to the rescue - saving the planet, one shower at a time

A popular bumper sticker in the 1970's, when conservation first became chic, read, "Save water - Shower with a friend." I wouldn't begin to suggest such a thing now, in the considerably more prudish 21st Century, but we could save a lot of water, and a lot of GHG emissions by showering with low-flow shower-heads.

I know, I know. Apparently the three scariest words in the English language are 'low flow shower-head.' Most Americans, upon hearing those words, react roughly the same as Kramer in a particularly funny Seinfeld episode entitled, appropriately enough, Low flow shower-head.  

Fortunately, things have changed. Technology, as it occasionally does when it isn't making things worse, has made this situation a lot better. There have been remarkable improvements in water pressure from low-flow shower-heads in recent years. 

One such fixture, the Alsons model 656 shower-head (available from Amazon.com and elsewhere for just over $20) produces an extremely satisfying shower using only 1.85 gallons of water per minute (GPM). I installed one in my guest bathroom as an experiment and it has turned out to be the most powerful shower in the house. 

Older shower-heads, pre-1992, often used 5.5 GPM or more.

If a family of four switched to 1.85 GPM shower-heads they could save as much as 42,000 gallons of water per year. Using an average cost for water of $.008 per gallon, that's a cost saving of $341 per year.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Three-quarters of the water used for showering comes from your hot water heater. That means roughly 30,000 fewer gallons need to be heated. The average cost to heat a gallon of water is about 5 cents. So the energy cost savings from switching shower-heads could be as much as $1,566 per year. That's a total cost savings of roughly $1,900 per year for water and energy. And a net emissions reduction of 6,155 lbs of CO2. Not a bad return on investment for a couple of $20 shower-heads!

Now, think globally. There are roughly 112 million households in the US. If ten percent of them switched to low-flow shower-heads it would reduce annual CO2 emissions by over 32 million tons, the equivalent of removing 5.7 million cars from the road. It would also save nearly half a trillion  gallons of water per year. 

One of our best friends in fighting climate change could turn out to be the lowly shower-head. So, go ahead, shower with a friend. You'll get just as clean and your conscience will get a little cleaner. 

This just in: There's still no such thing as clean coal. New spot from This is Reality.org

Perhaps not quite as effective (or funny) as their first TV spot aimed at busting the myth of clean coal, (see my Dec. 7 posting) this new one from This is Reality.org is pretty good. Certainly not a waste of the next 30 seconds of your time.

Green clubbing

Looking for a place to ring in what we all hope will be a greener new year? New York night club entrepreneur, John B. has opened what may be the city's first LEED certified nightlife destination. 

Greenhouse, located on SoHo's Varick Street, uses high-efficiency heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and an LED (light emitting diode) lighting system that the owner says will use just over 3 percent of the energy of a standard lighting installation.

All of the materials used to furnish the venue - from the upholstery on the banquettes to the coasters on the tables are eco-friendly: a bamboo dance floor, fabrics and wall coverings made from recycled materials, and Forestry Stewardship Certified wood. 

At the recycled glass bar you can imbibe 360 Vodka, an eco-friendly liquor packaged in a reusable bottle.

The bathrooms, which incorporate waterless urinals and a rainwater collection system for flushing its water saving toilets, are stocked with Kiehl's Aloe Vera Biodegradable Liquid Body Cleanser, the first beauty product to receive Cradle to Cradle certification.

Greenhouse purchases 100% wind-powered electricity and has instituted a carbon-offsetting program to counter the energy used in the club's construction and in it's day-to-day operation. 

While Greenhouse may be the first green club in New York, it's not the first in the world, or even necessarily the greenist. Surya, a dance club in London features a piezoelectric dance floor that generates 60% of the building's electricity by capturing the kinetic energy created by dancers' movements. The club also features organic drinks, and if you can prove you walked, biked or took public transportation to get there, the club will waive the entrance fee.

Holy Silicon, Batman! The Vatican goes solar.

 

The Vatican has installed 2,700 photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of its Paul VI Auditorium. The panels, $1.5 million gift from the German company, Solar World will generate 300 kilowatt hours annually, more than enough to power all the lighting, heating and air conditioning for the 6,000 seat hall. Excess power will be fed into the Vatican's electrical grid.

The Vatican is already carbon neutral by some estimates. It offsets all of its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing renewable energy credits and carbon certificates. The Vatican is also the owner of enough forest in Hungary to completely offset all of the carbon emitted by Vatican City, which is now the only soverign state in the world that can boast of being carbon neutral.

Environmental jitters: Vilsac, corn, and energy

Environmentalists are having heart palpitations over Tom Vilsack, Obama's pick for Secretary of Agriculture. The former two-term governor of Iowa has strong ties to farmers and a history of strong support for ethanol. 

Here's the problem. Farmers love turning corn into ethanol. 

It's very profitable for them. But do we get any real benefit from it? Some studies conclude that turning corn into ethanol is a net energy loser - by many estimates it takes as much as 29% more energy to produce a gallon of corn-based ethanol than the fuel yields. Other estimates see it as roughly a break even proposition.  

There are other downsides to making fuel from corn. It drives food prices up and encourages the clear-cutting of forests to make more land available for crops - a disaster in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. 

There is also, in my view, a real danger in encouraging farmers to become dependent on the income from corn-based ethanol. It's only a matter of time until recognition of the drawbacks produces a backlash that will put them out of business.

It may be ok, though - Vilsack, I mean. According to today's NY Times, Vilsack ‘was the co-chairman of a task force last year on climate change for the Council on Foreign Relations, which recommended phasing out subsidies for mature biofuels, including corn-based ethanol, as well as reducing tariffs on imported biofuels like Brazilian sugar ethanol.’ 

Ethanol made from sugar produces more energy than it takes to make it.

So we will have to wait and see. Pay attention, and be suspicious of any effort to expand corn-based ethanol production. 

Dying to promote renewable energy

When the people of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a small working class city outside of Barcelona wanted to make their town more sustainable they decided on a large installation of photovoltaic solar panels. There was just one small problem. The only flat, open and sunny area large enough for the solar array was the town cemetery. Undeterred, the town has installed 462 panels - enough to power 60 homes - atop the cemetery's mausoleums.

According to Esteve Serret, a director of Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma 'The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif'

More power to them, I say.

This story was brought to my attention by my daughter, Sophie. Happy Birthday Sophie!

World revolves around sun after all: Who knew? Obama believes in science

Something momentous happened today. It hasn't yet received the media attention it deserves but it is a game changer. At a press conference introducing his new energy and environmental team, Barack Obama said that his administration . . . "will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action."

This is a stunning and extremely welcome change from current policy. For the last eight years the Bush administration has had more or less the same relationship to science as the Catholic church in the 17th Century had to Galileo.

So far, the enormity of this change has failed to capture the attention of the media, which today devoted hours of coverage to airborne shoes. But today's statement by the President-elect, along with his cabinet choices for directing energy and environmental policy, has more potential to reshape our world than anything else that has happened since election night. And this hasn't exactly been a slow news month.

I'll be disappointed if tomorrow's headline in the New York Times isn't World Revolves Around Sun, After All.

What we need now, Part 2: Greener cars and greener houses

If we’re going to bail out the American auto industry there have to be strings attached. Or, better still, wires – with plugs attached. The only way Detroit will be able to survive is to start building the kind of cars we absolutely need – i.e. plug-in hybrids. It will reinvigorate American manufacturing, help wean us from our addiction to liquid hydrocarbons, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only is the car-buying public tired of buying crappy gas guzzlers with poor quality control, but we’re tired of boring, unimaginative cars that are no fun to drive. When I was a teenager cars were fun. Today they’ve become a burdensome necessity.

A similar approach might be just the thing to revive the homebuilding industry. McMansions are the residential equivalent of the SUV – too large, too inefficient, and not enough fun. Tomorrow’s homes will need to be the equivalent of plug-in hybrids – leaner, more efficient, better looking, better made, and, I hope, more fun.

In fact, the homebuilding industry can do something that not even hybrid cars can do. It is entirely possible, using currently available technology and materials, to build homes that consume zero-net energy.  And not only zero net energy, but energy positive enough to recharge our plug-in hybrids. Such houses exist already. If we can build one, we can build many.

When the economy recovers and it’s time to start buying cars and houses again, don’t settle for the dinosaurs of the last century. Demand sleek, efficient, fun-to-drive plug-in hybrids, and green, energy efficient homes with outlets in the garage for plugging in your car.

Behavior modification and energy efficiency

Art imitates life, or vice-versa. Well, art may be too strong a word. I had eagerly been awaiting the release of The Day the Earth Stood Still, a remake of one of my all-time favorite movies. In both films an emissary from an advanced civilization pays a visit to save us earthlings from ourselves. In the 1951 original, the threat of nuclear annihilation was the impetus for the uninvited guest. In the sadly disappointing remake, which I saw last night, it's global warming. In both films the message was the same; change your behavior or die.   

In the new version the man who came to dinner is prepared to exterminate the human race in order to save the planet, one of the few, we are informed, capable of supporting intelligent life - a debatable point. Anyway, he needn't have bothered. We are more than equal to the task all on our own. (See Frost,Robert)

We are, however, as the earthlings in the movie so desperately try to convince Dirty Harry from Alpha Ceturi, capable of change. It's been documented. Studies confirm that energy monitoring devices, digital displays that provide real-time feedback showing the moment-to-moment effects of our actions upon a building's energy consumption, actually reduce energy use by up to ten percent. 

This week's New York Times Magazine reports on a new twist in the human-techno energy use behavior mod dance. A Swiss-born inventor working in the Computing Culture group of the Media Lab at MIT has created a leg band that can track your energy consumption. "When it detects," as the Times writes, "that electric current levels have exceeded a certain threshold, the wireless device slowly drives six stainless-steel thorns into the flesh of your leg." I'm not making this up. The inventor calls it "therapy for environmental guilt." I call it meshuggah.

There are, however, several painless and inexpensive home energy monitoring devices on the market, as well as more elaborate ones for larger buildings.A company called Agilewavesmakes a sophisticated system that monitors every type of energy use in every part of large, complex structures, as well as the cost of the energy used and the resulting CO2 emissions.

 

For a selection of less costly residential models you might check out the Power Meter Store web site.

Or you can make your own very inexpensive and easy to assemble behavior modification system, as I did. I taped a copy of our electric bill to the inside of the door to the garage, where it would be impossible to miss. It changed my wife's behavior immediately; I got the silent treatment for three days. Too polite to say it aloud, she was no doubt thinking, as were the aliens in The Day the Earth Stood Still, change your behavior or die.

Oddly enough, though, our electric consumption actually went down. Go figure.

Conncticut mandates green building...sort of

A relatively new Connecticut law, Public Act No. 07-242, signed by Governor Jodi Rell on July 10, 2007 contains provisions mandating that, beginning January 1, 2009, all new public and private buildings over $5 million be constructed to meet LEED Silver green building standards (or the equivalent), and that beginning January 1, 2010 all renovations of $2 million or more meet the same standards. Residential buildings of four units or fewer are exempted, as are projects where the cost of meeting the green standards significantly outweighs the benefits.

On the surface, this would seem to be an extremely promising development, but there’s a catch. The law also requires that the State Buildings Inspector and the Codes and Standards Committee revise the state building code to require that buildings meet those standards as of the dates specified.  

The devil is in the details. The first draft of the code revisions was considered insufficient to achieve the desired results, so it was withdrawn. A new draft is being written but it’s a complicated process that will take months, and maybe much longer. The first meeting of the subcommittee to discuss the new draft isn’t until July 14, 2009, and it will take months more before the code amendments can be completed and passed into law.

In the meanwhile, the green building mandates in Public Act 07-242 are unenforceable.

A memo dated October 28, 2008 from Assistant Attorney General, Henri Alexandre lists some of the questions that must be addressed by the new code. They include:

1. What is included in the cost of a building?

2. How is "constructed" defined?

3. What is included in the cost for renovating a building?

4. How is "renovation" defined?

5. What body determines what "an equivalent standard" is?

6. What is the exemption process?

7. What baseline will be used to determine when "the cost of such compliance significantly outweighs benefits?"

8. What is an applicant’s appeal process if an exemption is denied?

These are all good questions, but not necessarily easy to answer. It could take a long time. This points up the difficulty of mandating green building.

The whole issue of mandating green building would disappear if more people realized what it means to build green. If more developers understood that for the same cost as conventional buildings they could build ones that had higher occupancy rates, commanded higher rents, and fetched higher prices on the resale market, why would anyone build anything but green buildings? Why would anyone choose to put up a building that was less profitable, less competitive, and less valuable?

It will take a while for that message to sink in, but in the long run, information may well produce more results than legislation.<>/span>

What we need now

Here's how I will judge the success of the Obama presidency. To what extent will the next four to eight years be devoted to energy and climate policy? Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters because everything else hinges on this.

What we need, what this country needs, what the planet needs, are all the same thing, and meeting that need is the only standard I believe worth measuring ourselves against. What we need is a concentrated, committed, and relentless effort directed at one thing: dealing with the climate crisis.

I don't say solving the climate crisis, because we are long past solving it. The only thing we can do at this point is to avoid the most dire consequences of our addiction to the combustion of burning fossil fuels. If we do not do this our great-grandchildren will almost certainly be faced with a planet barely capable of sustaining human life.

It is within our means to do something about this. But it won't happen without strong leadership that can inspire a collective effort beyond anything we have experienced since World War II. I think there is reason to hope that the new administration may rise to the occasion. But this is far from given. Pay close attention. And don't sit idly by. Make noise. Lots of it. 

A most entertaining year

Say what you will, this has been the most entertaining year. Starkly set, as it was, against the tragic, and tragically numbing background of carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, the events of the last twelve months included more jaw dropping, eye popping, gut wrenching, and truly dazzling surprises than any other among the roughly half-century I have spent on the planet.

 

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Somehow, today’s revelations about the governor of Illinois attempting to sell a seat in the U.S. senate - forgive me but  I feel  compelled to write that again, it is so brazen, attempting to sell a seat in the U.S. senate to the highest bidder has turned my perception of history on its head, as well as any notion of what it means to live through it. This is pure entertainment. As an added bonus, like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks, this latest seems like nothing so much as a Bizzaro World bookend to the simultaneous and strangely parallel (well, not exactly parallel) possibility that Hillary Clinton’s senate seat may be filled by Caroline Kennedy.  

 

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Add to this the layered and ironic sub-plot that Clinton’s replacement will be named by Elliott Spitzer’s replacement, this chapter in our history may turn out to be the greatest comedy ever written. All great comedies contain a tragic element, of course, and all great tragedies contain a comic element, so it’s a little hard to know for sure which this is, but today I’m slouching towards comedy. Either way, it's just so damn interesting.

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For sheer entertainment value, I am almost ready to concede, recent events come close to ameliorating the piling up of insult over injury as the financial crisis trickles down (like lead from a shot tower) to my small corner of the universe.  Not even Steven Spielberg could have imagined such a sweeping, epic roller-coaster of a story, with so many outlandish plot twists and so large a cast of improbable characters. This has been a year more operatic in scope than Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

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Not since Watergate have I found myself so in thrall to the news media. I cannot remember the last day I didn’t check in with CNN, NPR, and the Internet several times each just to answer the question, "What next?" 

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Poetic justice, anyone? Just imagine, in a country where no major political party has ever nominated a woman or an African American for the office of President, we suddenly had front row seats to the larger-than-life spectacle of Hillary and Obama battling it out practically to the very threshold of the Democratic convention. And imagine a country that outlawed slavery only a century-and-a-half ago now looking to Barack Obama as its longed-for savior, and breathing a collective sigh of relief that we didn’t elect John McCain.  It leaves me breathless.

 

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And, keep still, my palpitating heart, it looks as if the new administration may actually recognize and seize this unprecedented, unexpected, un-hoped for and unloved opportunity to solve the financial crisis by solving the energy crisis and the climate crisis. Only comedies end with such exquisite resolution. Still, this all is only prelude. The curtain is about to go up.

Clean coal: an oxymoron

Below are a few excerpts from www.thisisreality.org which shnes a bright light on the myth of clean coal. I caught their brilliant TV spot on Meet the Press this morning and wanted to share it immediately. Check it out.

The coal industry is spending millions advertising clean coal, but not a single clean coal power plant exists in the US today.  "Big Coal Campaigning to Keep Its Industry on Candidates' Minds," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 2008 

"While you might have heard the phrase 'clean coal' during the presidential campaign, it's actually an oxymoron." Brian Williams, NBC News, Nov 18, 2008 

 

Burning coal is a leading source of global warming pollution.

"GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006,” US EPA 2008

Burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity. 'Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States," US DOE 2000.; 'GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006,' US EPA 2008

There are no homes in America powered by clean coal. IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO₂ Capture and Storage Database; Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO₂ Capture and Storage Project Database

 

CO₂ emissions from US coal-based electricity are greater than emissions from all the cars and trucks in America. GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006, US EPA 2008

 

There are roughly 600 coal plants producing electricity in the US. Not one of them captures and stores its global warming pollution. “Electricity Facts," US DOE 2; IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO₂ Capture and Storage Database ; Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO₂ Capture and Storage Project Database 

 

 'Clean coal' is like a healthy cigarette. Blan Holman, attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center in Charleson, S.C.

My upcoming book: Practical Green Remodeling

These days most of my spare time (or more accurately, what used to be spare time) is devoted to working on the manuscript for my book, Practical Green Remodeling: Sustainable Solutions for Every Day Homes, to be published by Taunton Press early in 2010. That sounds eons in the future, but the manuscript has to be finished by March 1, so I have my hands full for the next few months.

Here is part of the book's Introduction.

What would it be like to live in a house that made us feel good? Not just by virtue of its fine proportions and attractive design, but a house that could actually make us healthier. And not only that, but a house that didn’t waste energy, squander scarce  resources, or harm the environment. And, just for good measure, a house that was economical to operate, required little maintenance, and was more valuable than its neighbors. In other words, what would it be like to live in a green home?

All across the country there has been a dramatic increase in the number of homeowners who want to know the answer to that question. Why are so many people suddenly interested in making their homes greener?

Perhaps it is because all across America, people are finally waking up to the realization that our planet is in serious trouble. More and more, we can’t help wondering what kind of world we are passing on to our children and grandchildren; what kind of problems are we saddling them with. Every day we see news accounts of rising global temperatures, melting glaciers, changing weather patterns that are starting to affect food production, serious water shortages, and the depletion of wildlife habitat, biodiversity,  and natural resources proceeding at an alarming rate. And more and more we are starting to ask ourselves what we can do about it.

The scope of the problem seems so vast that we often wonder how anything we do as individuals can possibly make a difference. Yet single family homes in the United States produce 21% of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

Our homes, at least, are something we, as individuals, do have the power to change. Remodeling a home in ways that make it greener offers an excellent opportunity to stop being part of the problem and to become part of the solution.If just one quarter of the single family homes in the U.S. reduced their energy use by 20% it would prevent 48 million tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere each year. That’s the equivalent of removing nearly 10 million cars from the road.

I will occasionally post additional snippets from the book, so stay tuned!

A new blog devoted to all things green and sustainable

Welcome to The Future is Green.

Every day I am reminded of the urgent need to create a more sustainable world. Every time I pick up a newspaper or magazine, surf the web, or follow the day's news on the radio or on TV I come across something related to the environment. Some stories underline the severity of the problems we earthlings face. Some stories offer hope that we might just be able to stave off the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Personally, I am an optimist. That doesn't mean that I am confident everything will be alright. To the contrary, I become more deeply concerned about environmental issues every day. But every day I also see signs of hope that strengthen my belief that it possible for humanity to rise to the occasion.

I especially take heart at the very positive signals coming from the Obama transition team. It seems clear that they fully grasp the magnitude of the climate crisis and are marshalling substantial resources to deal with it. Whether they can muster the political will to do enough, and fast enough, remains to be seen. But after eight years of inaction, not to mention deliberate efforts to derail environmental initiatives, I feel almost giddy with renewed hope.