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| | | The Urgent Imperative of Clean Energy Investment | | 2011-11-03 19:08:25 | Read about more events in the Progressivism on Tap series.
Joseph Romm, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Editor of ClimateProgress.org, spoke to attendees about the urgent need for better climate policy and the importance of an overarching narrative to frame the progressive approach to the issue at Washington, D.C.’s Busboys & Poets as part of the Progressivism on Tap series on March 23.
According to Romm, the Obama administration’s report card on progressive energy and environmental policy would show both good and bad grades. On the one hand, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was the “single biggest clean energy bill in U.S. history,” jumpstarting the process of making our nation’s infrastructure more energy efficient while also creating “green” jobs for many unemployed citizens. Further, over the course of his presidency, Obama has made countless appearances at renewable energy companies, seemingly a sign of support for this type of business.
On the other hand, however, Romm argued that the Obama administration has so far failed to articulate any sort of overarching narrative to persuade and excite the American people about the importance of large-scale comprehensive policy to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and of supporting investment in clean energy industry and infrastructure.
“The country is waiting to be rallied [to support climate policy],” said Romm. Most national polls show at least majority support for ending oil subsidies and investing in clean energy.
The United States does not have much time left to decide whether it wants to be a leader in clean industry—or if we want to be buying technology from countries like Germany and China in the future. Romm underscored the fact that Americans in this decade will see the price of gas rise to at least $4 or maybe $5 a gallon. Given how energy-intensive American industry and consumers are, the right choice is clear.
Read about more events in the Progressivism on Tap series.
SOURCE: americanprogress.org
| | More Details | | | | | | Where Did Global Warming Go? | | 2011-10-27 00:27:03 | IN 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised “a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change,” and arrived cavalry-like at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to broker a global pact.
But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue.
In the crowded Republican presidential field, most seem to agree with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that “the science is not settled” on man-made global warming, as he said in a debate last month. Alone among Republicans onstage that night, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. said that he trusted scientists’ view that the problem was real. At the moment, he has the backing of about 2 percent of likely Republican voters.
Though the evidence of climate change has, if anything, solidified, Mr. Obama now talks about “green jobs” mostly as a strategy for improving the economy, not the planet. He did not mention climate in his last State of the Union address. Meanwhile, the administration is fighting to exempt United States airlines from Europe’s new plan to charge them for CO2 emissions when they land on the continent. It also seems poised to approve a nearly 2,000-mile-long pipeline, from Canada down through the United States, that will carry a kind of oil. Extracting it will put relatively high levels of emissions into the atmosphere.
“In Washington, ‘climate change’ has become a lightning rod, it’s a four-letter word,” said Andrew J. Hoffman, director of the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainable Development.
Across the nation, too, belief in man-made global warming, and passion about doing something to arrest climate change, is not what it was five years or so ago, when Al Gore’s movie had buzz and Elizabeth Kolbert’s book about climate change, “Field Notes From a Catastrophe,” was a best seller. The number of Americans who believe the earth is warming dropped to 59 percent last year from 79 percent in 2006, according to polling by the Pew Research Group. When the British polling firm Ipsos Mori asked Americans this past summer to list their three most pressing environmental worries, “global warming/climate change” garnered only 27 percent, behind even “overpopulation.”
This fading of global warming from the political agenda is a mostly American phenomenon. True, public enthusiasm for legislation to tackle climate change has flagged somewhat throughout the developed world since the recession of 2008. Nonetheless, in many other countries, legislation to control emissions has rolled out apace. Just last Wednesday, Australia’s House of Representatives passed a carbon tax, which is expected to easily clear the country’s Senate. Europe’s six-year-old carbon emissions trading system continues its yearly expansion. In 2010, India passed a carbon tax on coal. Even China’s newest five-year plan contains a limited pilot cap-and-trade system, under which polluters pay for excess pollution.
The United States is the “one significant outlier” on responding to climate change, according to a recent global research report produced by HSBC, the London-based bank. John Ashton, Britain’s special representative for climate change, said in an interview that “in the U.K., in Europe, in most places I travel to” — but not in the United States — “the starting point for conversation is that this is real, there are clear and present dangers, so let’s get a move on and respond.” After watching the Republican candidates express skepticism about global warming in early September, former President Bill Clinton put it more bluntly, “I mean, it makes us — we look like a joke, right?”
Americans — who produce twice the emissions per capita that Europeans do — are in many ways wired to be holdouts. We prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value personal freedom, are suspicious of scientists, and tend to distrust the kind of sweeping government intervention required to confront rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change presents numerous ideological challenges to our culture and our beliefs,” Professor Hoffman of the Erb Institute says. “People say, ‘Wait a second, this is really going to affect how we live!’ ”
There are, of course, other factors that hardened resistance: America’s powerful fossil-fuel industry, whose profits are bound to be affected by any greater control of carbon emissions; a cold American winter in 2010 that made global warming seem less imminent; and a deep recession that made taxes on energy harder to talk about, and job creation a more pressing issue than the environment — as can be seen in the debate over the pipeline from Canada.
But it is also true that Europe has endured a deep recession and has had mild winters. What’s more, some of the loudest climate deniers are English. Yet the European Union is largely on target to meet its goal of reducing emissions by at least 20 percent over 1990 levels by 2020.
Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner on climate action, told me recently: “Look, it was not a piece of cake here either.”
In fact, many countries in Europe have come to see combating climate change and the move to a “greener” economy as about “opportunities rather than costs,” Mr. Ashton said. In Britain, the low-carbon manufacturing sector has been one of the few to grow through the economic slump.
“One thing I’ve been pleasantly surprised about in the E.U. is that despite the economic and financial crisis, the momentum on climate change has more or less continued,” Mr. Ashton said.
And Conservatives, rather than posing an obstacle, are directing aggressive climate policies in much of the world. Before becoming the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, Ms. Hedegaard was a well-known Conservative politician in her native Denmark. In Britain, where a 2008 law required deep cuts in emissions, a coalition Conservative government is now championing a Green Deal.
In the United States, the right wing of the Republican Party has managed to turn skepticism about man-made global warming into a requirement for electability, forming an unlikely triad with antiabortion and gun-rights beliefs. In findings from a Pew poll this spring, 75 percent of staunch conservatives, 63 percent of libertarians and 55 percent of Main Street Republicans said there was no solid evidence of global warming.
“This has become a partisan political issue here in a way it has not elsewhere,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “We are seeing doubts in the U.S. largely because the issue has become a partisan one, with Democrats” — 75 percent of whom say they believe there is strong evidence of climate change — “seeing one thing and Republicans another.”
Europeans understand the challenges in the United States, though they sound increasingly impatient. “We are very much aware of the political situation in the United States and we don’t say ‘do this,’ when we know it can’t get through Congress,” said Ms. Hedegaard, when she was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly last month. But she added:
“O.K. if you can’t commit today, when can you? When are you willing to join in? Australia is making a cap-and-trade system. South Korea is introducing one. New Zealand and the E.U. have it already. So when is the time? That’s the question for the U.S.”
MEANWHILE, in the developing world, emerging economies like India and China are now pursuing aggressive climate policies. “Two years ago the assumption was that the developed world would have to lead, but now China, India and Brazil have jumped in with enthusiasm, and are moving ahead,” said Nick Robins of HSBC Global Research.
Buffeted by two years of treacherous weather that they are less able to handle than richer nations — from floods in India to water shortages in China — developing countries are feeling vulnerable. Scientists agree that extreme weather events will be more severe and frequent on a warming planet, and insurance companies have already documented an increase.
So perhaps it is no surprise that regard for climate change as “a very serious problem” has risen significantly in many developing nations over the past two years. A 2010 Pew survey showed that more than 70 percent of people in China, India and South Korea were willing to pay more for energy in order to address climate change. The number in the United States was 38 percent. China’s 12th five-year plan, for 2011-2015, directs intensive investment to low carbon industries. In contrast, in the United States, there is “no prospect of moving ahead” at a national legislative level, Mr. Robins said, although some state governments are addressing the issue.
In private, scientific advisers to Mr. Obama say he and his administration remain committed to confronting climate change and global warming. But Robert E. O’Connor, program director for decision, risk and management sciences at the National Science Foundation in Washington, said a bolder leader would emphasize real risks that, apparently, now feel distant to many Americans. “If it’s such an important issue, why isn’t he talking about it?”
SOURCE: nytimes.com | | More Details | | | | | | Top 10 Reasons Why Green Jobs Are Vital to Our Economy | | 2011-10-12 20:28:48 | Green jobs are integral to any effort to jumpstart our economy and reduce as rapidly as possible our 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The rapid growth of green jobs will boost demand in our economy by reducing unemployment, make America more competitive in the global economy, and protect our public health—all of which will result in greater economic productivity and long-term economic prosperity. Here are the top 10 reasons why this is the case today and into the future:
1. There are already 2.7 million jobs across the clean economy. Clean energy is already proving to be larger job creation engine than the heavily subsidized fossil-fuels sector, putting Americans back to work in a lackluster economy.
2. Across a range of clean energy projects, including renewable energy, transit, and energy efficiency, for every million dollars spent, 16.7 green jobs are created. That is over three times the 5.3 jobs per million dollars that are created from the same spending on fossil-fuel industries.
3. The clean energy sector is growing at a rate of 8.3 percent. Solar thermal energy expanded by 18.4 percent annually from 2003 to 2010, along with solar photovoltaic power by 10.7 percent, and biofuels by 8.9 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, the U.S. wind energy industry saw 35 percent average annual growth over the past five years, accounting for 35 percent of new U.S. power capacity in that period, according to the 2010 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report. As a whole, the clean energy sector’s average growth rate of 8.3 percent annually during this period was nearly double the growth rate of the overall economy during that time.
4. The production of cleaner cars and trucks is employing over 150,000 workers across the United States today. These job numbers are likely to increase as improved car and light truck standards recently announced by President Barack Obama will require more skilled employees and encourage further investment.
5. Median wages are 13 percent higher in green energy careers than the economy average. Median salaries for green jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy. As an added benefit, nearly half of these jobs employ workers with a less than a four-year college degree, which accounts for a full 70 percent of our workforce.
6. Green jobs are made in America, spurring innovation with more U.S. content than other industries. Most of the products used in energy efficiency retrofits are more than 90 percent made in America. Sheet metal for ductwork is over 99 percent domestically sourced, as are vinyl windows (98 percent) and rigid foam insulation (more than 95 percent). Even major mechanical equipment such as furnaces (94 percent) and air conditioning and heat pumps (82 percent) are predominantly American made.
7. We have a positive trade balance in solar power components such as photovoltaic components and solar heating and cooling components of $1.9 billion, and are exporting components to China. Contrast this with the oil industry, where in 2010 alone we imported over $250 billion in petroleum-related products. As our nation’s basic manufacturing base declines, we risk losing our place in the forefront of innovation if we don’t invest in advanced manufacturing in the green sector.
8. Three separate programs for energy efficiency retrofits have employed almost 25,000 Americans in three months. The Weatherization Assistance Program, Energy Efficiency Block Grant Program, and State Energy Programs have collectively upgraded over half a million buildings since the programs began to ramp up from April 1, 2011 and June 30, 2011, providing immediate new and sustainable job opportunities to tens of thousands of construction workers eagerly searching for work.
9. Clean energy jobs are better for U.S. small businesses. Specialty construction companies that perform energy retrofits show very high rates of small business participation in the construction. Ninety-one percent of the firms involved in retrofits are mall businesses with less than 20 employees.
10. An abundance of jobs in the green sector are manufacturing jobs with an upward career track. Forty-one percent of the nation’s green jobs offer medium to long-term career building and training opportunities, and 26 percent of green jobs are in the manufacturing sector, compared to 9 percent in the traditional economy.
The bottom line: Green jobs being created through smart investments in our energy infrastructure are expanding employment opportunities while reducing pollution of our air and water, providing an alternative to foreign oil, and allowing us to export more American-made goods abroad.
SOURCE: americaprogress.org | | More Details | | | | | | Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment | | 2011-10-12 20:25:39 | The “green” or “clean” or low-carbon economy—defined as the sector of the economy that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit—remains at once a compelling aspiration and an enigma.
As a matter of aspiration, no swath of the economy has been more widely celebrated as a source of economic renewal and potential job creation. Yet, the clean economy remains an enigma: hard to assess. Not only do “green” or “clean” activities and jobs related to environmental aims pervade all sectors of the U.S. economy; they also remain tricky to define and isolate—and count.
The clean economy has remained elusive in part because, in the absence of standard definitions and data, strikingly little is known about its nature, size, and growth at the critical regional level.
Seeking to help address these problems, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings worked with Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice to develop, analyze, and comment on a detailed database of establishment-level employment statistics pertaining to a sensibly defined assemblage of clean economy industries in the United States and its metropolitan areas.
"Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment" concludes that:
The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors. Most clean economy jobs reside in mature segments that cover a wide swath of activities including manufacturing and the provision of public services such as wastewater and mass transit. A smaller portion of the clean economy encompasses newer segments that respond to energy-related challenges. These include the solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery industries.
The clean economy grew more slowly in aggregate than the national economy between 2003 and 2010, but newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession. Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. This performance lagged the growth in the national economy, which grew by 4.2 percent annually over the period (if job losses from establishment closings are omitted to make the data comparable). However, this measured growth heavily reflected the fact that many longer-standing companies in the clean economy—especially those involved in housing- and building-related segments—laid off large numbers of workers during the real estate crash of 2007 and 2008, while sectors unrelated to the clean economy (mainly health care) created many more new jobs nationally. At the same time, newer clean economy establishments— especially those in young energy-related segments such as wind energy, solar PV, and smart grid—added jobs at a torrid pace, albeit from small bases.
The clean economy is manufacturing and export intensive. Roughly 26 percent of all clean economy jobs lie in manufacturing establishments, compared to just 9 percent in the broader economy. On a per job basis, establishments in the clean economy export roughly twice the value of a typical U.S. job ($20,000 versus $10,000). The electric vehicles (EV), green chemical products, and lighting segments are all especially manufacturing intensive while the biofuels, green chemicals, and EV industries are highly export intensive.
The clean economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole. Median wages in the clean economy—meaning those in the middle of the distribution—are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages. Yet a disproportionate percentage of jobs in the clean economy are staffed by workers with relatively little formal education in moderately well-paying “green collar” occupations.
Among regions, the South has the largest number of clean economy jobs though the West has the largest share relative to its population. Seven of the 21 states with at least 50,000 clean economy jobs are in the South. Among states, California has the highest number of clean jobs but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.
Most of the country’s clean economy jobs and recent growth concentrate within the largest metropolitan areas. Some 64 percent of all current clean economy jobs and 75 percent of its newer jobs created from 2003 to 2010 congregate in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.
The clean economy permeates all of the nation’s metropolitan areas, but it manifests itself in varied configurations. Metropolitan area clean economies can be categorized into four-types: service-oriented, manufacturing, public sector, and balanced. New York, through mass transit, embodies a service orientation; so does San Francisco through professional services and Las Vegas through architectural services. Many Midwestern and Southern metros like Louisville; Cleveland; Greenville, SC; and Little Rock—but also San Jose in the West—host clean economies that are heavily manufacturing oriented. State capitals are among those with a disproportionate share of clean jobs in the public sector (e.g. Harrisburg, Sacramento, Raleigh, and Springfield). Finally, some metros—such as Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Portland, OR; and Los Angeles— balance multi-dimensional clean economies.
Strong industry clusters boost metros’ growth performance in the clean economy. Clustering entails proximity to businesses in similar or related industries. Establishments located in counties containing a significant number of jobs from other establishments in the same segment grew much faster than more isolated establishments from 2003 to 2010. Overall, clustered establishments grew at a rate that was 1.4 percentage points faster each year than non-clustered (more isolated) establishments. Examples include professional environmental services in Houston, solar photovoltaic in Los Angeles, fuel cells in Boston, and wind in Chicago.
The measurements and trends presented here offer a mixed picture of a diverse array of environmentally-oriented industry segments growing modestly even as a sub-set of clean energy, energy efficiency, and related segments grow much faster than the nation (albeit from a small base) and in ways that are producing a desirable array of jobs, including in manufacturing and export-oriented fields.
As to what governments, policymakers, and regional leaders should do to catalyze faster and broader growth across the U.S. clean economy, it is clear that the private sector will play the lead role, but governments have a role too. In this connection, the fact that significant policy uncertainties and gaps are weakening market demand for clean economy goods and services, chilling finance, and raising questions about the clean innovation pipeline reinforces the need for engagement and reform. Not only are other nations bidding to secure global production and the jobs that come with it but the United States currently risks failing to exploit growing world demand. And so this report concludes that vigorous private sector-led growth needs to be co-promoted through complementary engagements by all levels of the nation’s federal system to ensure the existence of well-structured markets, a favorable investment climate, and a rich stock of cutting-edge technology—as well as strong regional cast to all efforts. Along these lines, the report recommends that governments help:
Scale up the market by taking steps to catalyze vibrant domestic demand for low-carbon and environmentally-oriented goods and services. Intensified “green” procurement efforts by all levels of government are one such market-making engagement. But there are others. Congress and the federal government could help by putting a price on carbon, passing a national clean energy standard (CES), and moving to ensure more rational cost recovery on new transmission links for the delivery of renewable energy to urban load centers. States can adopt or strengthen their own clean energy standards, reduce the initial costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption, and pursue electricity market reform to facilitate the use of clean and efficient solutions. And localities can also support adoption by expediting permitting for green projects, adopting green building and other standards, and adopting innovative financing tools to reduce the upfront costs of investing in clean technologies.
Ensure adequate finance by moving to address the serious shortage of affordable, risk-tolerant, and larger-scale capital that now impedes the scale-up of numerous clean economy industry segments. On this front Congress should create an emerging technology deployment finance entity to address the commercialization “Valley of Death” and also work to rationalize and reform the myriad tax provisions and incentives that currently encourage capital investments in clean economy projects. States, for their part, can supplement private lending activity by providing guarantees and participating loans or initial capital for revolving loan funds targeting clean economy projects using new or improved technologies. And for that matter regions and localities can also help narrow the deployment finance gap by helping to reduce the costs and uncertainty of projects by expediting their physical build-out, whether by managing zoning and permitting issues or even pre-approving sites.
Drive innovation by investing both more and differently in the clean economy innovation system. With the needed major scale-up of investment levels unlikely for now, Congress at least needs to embrace continued incremental growth of key energy and environmental research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budgets. At the same time, Congress should continue its recent institutional experimentation through measured expansion of such recent start-ups as the Energy Frontier Research Centers, ARPA-E, and Energy Innovation Hubs programs. Two worthy additional experiments would be the creation of a water sciences innovation center and the establishment of a regional clean economy consortia initiative. States can also advance the clean economy through maintaining and expanding their own RD&D efforts, perhaps by tapping state clean energy funds where they exist. All should be focused and prioritized through a rigorous, data-driven analysis of the nature, growth, and strengths of local clean economy innovation clusters.
In addition, the “Sizing the Clean Economy“ emphasizes that in working on each of these fronts federal, state, and regional leaders need to:
Focus on regions, meaning that all parties need to place detailed knowledge of local industry dynamics and regional growth strategies near the center of efforts to advance the clean economy. While the federal government should increase its investment in new regional innovation and industry cluster programs such as the Economic Development Administration’s i6 Green Challenge, states should work to improve the information base about local clean economy industry clusters and move to support regionally crafted initiatives for advancing them. Regional actors, meanwhile, should take the lead in using data and analysis to understand the local clean economy in detail; identify competitive strengths; and then move to formulate strong, “bottom up” strategies for overcoming key clusters’ binding constraints. Employing cluster intelligence and strategy to design and tune regional workforce development strategies will be a critical regional priority.
***
The measurements, trends, and discussions offered here provide an encouraging but also challenging assessment of the ongoing development of the clean economy in the United States and its regions. In many respects, the analysis warrants excitement. As the nation continues to search for new sources of high-quality growth, the present findings depict a sizable and diverse array of industry segments that is—in key private-sector areas—expanding rapidly at a time of sluggish national growth. With smart policy support, broader, more rapid growth seems possible. At the same time, however, the information presented here is challenging, most notably because the growth of the clean economy has almost certainly been depressed by significant policy problems and uncertainties.
That question is: Will the nation marshal the will to make the most of those industries?
SOURCE: brookings.edu | | More Details | | | | | | Green Jobs by the Numbers | | 2011-10-05 20:53:51 | Top Clean Tech Sectors Saw Explosive Growth in 2003-2010 Despite the Great Recession
There’s one thing we know for certain about green jobs: They are real, well-paid, and growing. The jobs that make up the clean energy economy are on the rise when jobs in many other sectors are slipping away or moving overseas. With 14 million unemployed Americans, they are a sign of hope in an otherwise stagnant economy.
In terms of sheer growth, the clean tech sector glows especially brightly. The July 2011 report “Sizing the Clean Economy” from the Brookings Institution and Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice makes clear that emerging clean tech sectors saw explosive growth in recent years.
In particular, the clean economy sector focused on clean energy—especially wind, solar, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery companies—grew far more quickly than the economy as a whole. The Brookings report slices and dices the data in a number of ways. But most striking is the major jobs growth in clean energy between 2003 and 2010: Solar thermal and wind grew by 18.4 percent and 14.9 percent, respectively.
This chart breaks down the top 10 of these specific clean technology industries in terms of their annual average percent change in jobs from 2003 to 2010:
Segments with initially very few jobs saw particularly dramatic change over time, though the total jobs in the segment may still be much smaller than in others with a larger baseline.
This chart breaks them down in terms of absolute change in jobs: Some other facts and figures you should know about green jobs and the clean energy economy:
- There are currently 2.7 million jobs in the “clean economy,” broadly defined to include both mature and emerging industries across the clean tech, transit, conservation, waste, agriculture, and other clean sectors.
- The clean economy as a whole—not just the clean tech sectors discussed above—grew by 8.3 percent from 2008 to 2009, in the depths of the recession. This was almost double what the overall economy grew during those years. This is in large part thanks to the Recovery Act.
- Median wages are 13 percent higher in green energy careers than the economy average.
- Three separate programs for energy efficiency retrofits employed almost 25,000 Americans in three months since earlier this year. The Weatherization Assistance Program, Energy Efficiency Block Grant Program, and State Energy Programs collectively upgraded over half a million buildings since they began to ramp up earlier this year. These programs mainly hired construction workers, a key point during a time of particularly heavy unemployment in the construction sector.
In sum, the clean economy has continued to grow even while industries across America have had to lay off workers or close up shop. Instead of dancing on the grave of those few clean energy companies that do not make it, we need to support the smart growth policies and investments that can create more green jobs while strengthening our greater economy.
SOURCE: americanprogress.org | | More Details | | | | | | OCC’s Southfield Campus Presents Sustainability Day With Guest Speaker Norman Christopher | | 2011-09-28 20:09:26 | The Student Life Office at Oakland Community College’s Southfield Campus will present a Campus Sustainability Day, Thursday, October 20.
The event will be held in the campus’ Southfield Café from 12 noon to 1:30 pm. Admission is free, and the public is invited.
Guest speaker is Norman Christopher, an executive with over 25 years of global management background, including president, CEO and chief operating officer experience. He has helped improve business performance at Dow Chemical, the Olin Corporation, the Lubrizol Corporation and Haviland Enterprises in Grand Rapids.
Mr. Christopher currently serves as director of the Sustainability Community Development Initiative for Grand Valley State University.
To learn more contact Stacey Jackson at 248.246.2586, or email her at snjackso@oaklandcc.edu.
The Southfield Campus is located at 22322 Rutland Drive between Southfield Road and Providence Drive, just south of 9 Mile Road. Free parking is available in campus lots.
SOURCE: oaklandcc.edu
| | More Details | | | | | | Why Small Businesses Should Be Adding More Green Jobs | | 2011-09-28 20:06:28 | The U.S. economy is now the same size that it was before the 2007 recession, and yet we have 7 million fewer jobs. The latest data from the Department of Labor suggests that zero job growth is here to stay well into 2012. As conversations across the nation shift from how to create economic growth to how to create more jobs, many are asking: what should be done? To answer this question, we have to consider in which sectors America can achieve competitive advantage relative to emerging powerhouses such as China and India.
The quest for national competitive advantage is not new, but how we pursue it is taking on fresh significance. Recent GDP growth, which hovered around a meager 2% in the first half of 2011, came primarily from cutting the workforce or shifting jobs overseas; this strategy will not help us reach our employment goals.
Small business has historically been a powerful engine of job creation and yet it is shying away from one of the biggest growth opportunities of our time: the Clean Economy, broadly defined here to include not only renewable energy, public mass transit, and waste treatment but all goods and services with environmental benefits. The pursuit of environmental business opportunities by small business may hold the key to America‘s elusive goal of long-term, high-income job creation.
At first glance, environmental anything would seem an unlikely answer to our woes. Environmentalists have a long history of anti-business rants, sometimes against growth itself. Eco-products have a reputation for being expensive or of lower quality; think of premium-priced environmentally-friendly dishwashing liquids that leave spots on your glassware. But, mainstream companies are starting to demonstrate that economically viable and environmentally friendly can go hand in hand. According to a recent report of the Brookings Institution, the clean economy is surging and green jobs already pay more than the median wage.
A new breed of business leader is pursuing environmental sustainability for profit, and it‘s not only niche eco-brands of the 1990s – the cool, hip, but expensive lineups from Patagonia to Seventh Generation. In the last decade, main stream corporations like Walmart, General Electric and Waste Management got into the act with eco-innovations to better meet customer and investor expectations.
What we are not seeing enough of are small- and mid-sized companies creating green jobs. Too many of these often family-run enterprises still view the environment as a cost or, at best, a matter of energy conservation (“turn off the lights!”) and two-sided copying. They treat environmental pressures as annoying obligations and only do the minimum required by law. While many others now recognize environmental performance as business opportunity, it often ends up “bolted on” – a few solar panels or hybrid cars at the office headquarters of a manufacturing or services business. These tactics simply do not create the revenues or savings – the financial “breathing room” – needed to deliver new jobs.
This is not to say that small business role models for the clean economy don‘t exist. Among the leaders, you will find an industrial sands manufacturer in Chardon, Ohio; a Chicago-based mosquito control company that won last year‘s U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award; a floor cleaning equipment company in Minneapolis that uses ionized tap water to powerfully clean commercial floors without chemicals; and a next-generation Smart Grid player in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Each of these companies is using new environmental realities to differentiate its offering, make more money, and create new jobs in the process.
For now, only a handful of smaller players nationwide is choosing to embed sustainability into the very DNA of what they do, incorporating environmental intelligence into core business activities with no trade-off in price or quality. They are learning to leverage environmental challenges, such as a smaller carbon footprint or reduced water usage, for competitive advantage. Through innovation – in product design and business model – these pioneering heartland companies are proving that we can create even more value for customers and investors than we otherwise would, with smarter products, more powerful brands, and blue ocean opportunities to solve growing environmental problems.
China is already investing more than the U.S. in renewable energy. It now has the largest installed base of wind power in the world, and is targeting to have 20 percent of its energy sourced from renewables by 2020. U.S. businesses can participate in the race to a cleaner and greener future where environmentally friendly is the new normal. This is no longer just a better environmental strategy; it is a necessary response to a fundamentally different market, one that unifies the economy, the U.S. work force, and the future of life as we know it.
SOURCE: forbes.com | | More Details | | | | | | Grassroots Climate Action: What’s next? | | 2011-09-09 16:26:59 |
The Bard CEP National Climate Seminar kicked off the Fall 2011 series with a conversation with Mike Tidwell, founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network , entitled “The Tea Party and Climate Strategy”. With the arrests of 1,252 climate activists in front of the White House over the past couple weeks for acts of civil disobedience, the discussion focused on where does the climate movement go from here to keep moving forward. This theme was particularly relevant as there is a continuing need to nationalize awareness and put pressure on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sand pipeline permit, a project that would ingrain the US’s dependence on fossil fuels. The conversation between Mr. Tidwell and the audience focused on what climate activists need to do now to push forward towards real climate legislation and solutions to climate change. To read more, visit www.bard.edu/cep/blog.
SOURCE: Bard | | More Details | | | | | | Bard Environment Director Arrested at White House Civil Disobedience Designed to Impact Obama Pipeline Decision | | 2011-09-09 16:25:43 |  Sept 2, Annandale-on-Huson, NY-- The Director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, Eban Goodstein, was arrested in front of the White House on Thursday. Goodstein joined over 800 peaceful protestors sent to jail over the last 10 days, seeking President Obama’s veto of a controversial pipeline project.
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude oil from Canada’s tar sands oil deposits in northern Alberta to refineries in Texas. Critics of the pipeline, including the Republican Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, fear that spills from the pipeline could contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer. The massive Ogallala groundwater system provides drinking and irrigation water to close to 80% of the state’s residents.
A major concern is the global warming impact of the project. The tar sands are a particularly dirty type of oil, requiring large amounts of energy to mine and process. As a result, the fuel emits more than twice the global warming pollution during the production process than does conventional oil. According to NASA climate scientist James Hansen, full “exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.”
Goodstein, a leading national climate change educator, sees pipeline construction as locking in decades of global warming pollution. “Students graduating today have only a short window to rewire the world with clean energy. This will be key to revitalizing the American economy, and it is critical to preserving a recognizable world for our kids. The Keystone Pipeline would be a massive step backwards”.
The State Department is expected to make a decision on a pipeline permit before the end of the year. Goodstein and Bard student, Hanna Mitchell, hope that their civil disobedience will help convince President Obama that pipeline construction is not in the best interests of the nation, or the world.
A Washington DC SWAT team, along with National Park Police, hand-cuffed the protestors, who were sitting together on the sidewalk in front of the White House. They were taken in vans to a DC jail, and released after paying a $100 fine.
SOURCE: BARD | | More Details | | | | | | Energy Management program to energize students in new economy | | 2011-09-02 16:17:06 | Joint certificate program focuses on managing energy issues for sustainable enterprises
Rochester, Mich. – In transitioning to a new energy economy, a growing number of regional business and community organizations are developing processes, products and services necessary to adapt to changing regulatory, tax, supply-chain and demand environments. As a result, the emerging clean energy sector is poised to expand significantly in coming years.
Oakland University's School of Business Management and School of Engineering and Computer Sciences have responded to growing demand in this field by partnering to create an Energy Management Certificate Program that focuses on innovative means of reducing energy costs, boosting bottom line performance and becoming more competitive.
Students in this six-week course will learn to better understand energy usage, implement cost- and energy-saving strategies, apply sustainable principles and practices, and acquire practical skills to evaluate efficient energy choices.
Students also will benefit from the expertise that a diverse group of engineering and business faculty experts bring to the program. To learn more about the accomplished educators involved, those interested can visit the energy management website listed below.
Oakland's program is ideal for engineers and technicians; facility, maintenance and energy managers; design professionals; green sales representatives; architects, contractors and subcontractors; and any business professional or individual interested or involved in the green energy field.
Fall classes will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays from Friday, Sept. 16, through Saturday, Nov. 5. The program will also be offered during the winter 2012 semester.
The course's $2,000 registration cost includes all materials and lunches. To learn more, check program dates or to register, visit oakland.edu/energymgmt, or contact Maureen Callaghan at mpcallag@oakland.edu or (248) 412-3235.
SOURCE: Oakland University | | More Details | | | | | | Sizzle Factor for a Restless Climate | | 2011-09-01 18:07:38 | ENJOYING the heat wave?
The answer is probably no if you live in Abilene, Tex., where temperatures have been at or above 100 degrees for 40 days this summer. It’s been a little cooler in Savannah, Ga., where the mercury hit 90 or more for 56 days in a row. Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma are coping with their driest nine-month stretch since 1895.
Yes, it has been a very hot summer after one of the most extreme-weather springs on record. It’s time to face the fact that the weather isn’t what it used to be.
Every 10 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recalculates what it calls climate “normals,” 30-year averages of temperature and precipitation for about 7,500 locations across the United States. The latest numbers, released earlier this month, show that the climate of the last 10 years was about 1.5 degrees warmer than the climate of the 1970s, and the warmest since the first decade of the last century. Temperatures were, on average, 0.5 degrees warmer from 1981 to 2010 than they were from 1971 to 2000, and the average annual temperatures for all of the lower 48 states have gone up.
For climate geeks like me, the new normals offer a fascinating and disturbing snapshot of a restless climate. The numbers don’t take sides or point fingers. They acknowledge both powerful natural climate fluctuations as well as the steady drumbeat of warming caused by roughly seven billion people trying to live and prosper on a small planet, emitting heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the process.
Even this seemingly modest shift in climate can mean a big change in weather. Shifting weather patterns influence energy demand, affect crop productivity and lead to weather-related disasters. In the United States, in any given year, routine weather events like a hot day or a heavy downpour can cost the economy as much as $485 billion in crop losses, construction delays and travel disruptions, a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research found. In other words, that extra 1.5 degrees might be more than we can afford.
And while the new normals don’t point to a cause, climate science does. Drawing from methods used in epidemiology, a field of climate research called “detection and attribution” tests how human actions like burning fossil fuels affect climate and increase the odds of extreme weather events.
Heat-trapping pollution at least doubled the likelihood of the infamous European heat wave that killed more than 30,000 people during the summer of 2003, according to a study in the journal Nature in 2004. And if we don’t ease our grip on the climate, summers like that one will likely happen every other year by 2040, the study warned. Human actions have warmed the climate on all seven continents, and as a result all weather is now occurring in an environment that bears humanity’s signature, with warmer air and seas and more moisture than there was just a few decades ago, resulting in more extreme weather.
The snapshots of climate history from NOAA can also provide a glimpse of what’s in store locally in the future. Using climate models, we can project what future Julys might look like. For example, by 2050, assuming we continue to pump heat-trapping pollution into our atmosphere at a rate similar to today’s, New Yorkers can expect the number of July days exceeding 90 degrees to double, and those exceeding 95 degrees to roughly triple. Sweltering days in excess of 100 degrees, rare now, will become a regular feature of the Big Apple’s climate in the 2050s.
The next time NOAA calculates its new temperature normals will be in 2021 — when there will be about another billion people on the planet. Lady Gaga may no longer be hot. But the climate almost surely will be.
Heidi Cullen, a scientist at Climate Central, a journalism and research organization, is the author of “The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet.”
By Heidi Cullen | | More Details | | | | | | Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment | | 2011-09-01 18:04:12 | The “green” or “clean” or low-carbon economy—defined as the sector of the economy that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit—remains at once a compelling aspiration and an enigma.
As a matter of aspiration, no swath of the economy has been more widely celebrated as a source of economic renewal and potential job creation. Yet, the clean economy remains an enigma: hard to assess. Not only do “green” or “clean” activities and jobs related to environmental aims pervade all sectors of the U.S. economy; they also remain tricky to define and isolate—and count.
View the report's interactive indicator map »
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Find statistics for your state or metropolitan area »
The clean economy has remained elusive in part because, in the absence of standard definitions and data, strikingly little is known about its nature, size, and growth at the critical regional level.
Seeking to help address these problems, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings worked with Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice to develop, analyze, and comment on a detailed database of establishment-level employment statistics pertaining to a sensibly defined assemblage of clean economy industries in the United States and its metropolitan areas.
"Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment" concludes that:
The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors. Most clean economy jobs reside in mature segments that cover a wide swath of activities including manufacturing and the provision of public services such as wastewater and mass transit. A smaller portion of the clean economy encompasses newer segments that respond to energy-related challenges. These include the solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery industries.
The clean economy grew more slowly in aggregate than the national economy between 2003 and 2010, but newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession. Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. This performance lagged the growth in the national economy, which grew by 4.2 percent annually over the period (if job losses from establishment closings are omitted to make the data comparable). However, this measured growth heavily reflected the fact that many longer-standing companies in the clean economy—especially those involved in housing- and building-related segments—laid off large numbers of workers during the real estate crash of 2007 and 2008, while sectors unrelated to the clean economy (mainly health care) created many more new jobs nationally. At the same time, newer clean economy establishments— especially those in young energy-related segments such as wind energy, solar PV, and smart grid—added jobs at a torrid pace, albeit from small bases.
The clean economy is manufacturing and export intensive. Roughly 26 percent of all clean economy jobs lie in manufacturing establishments, compared to just 9 percent in the broader economy. On a per job basis, establishments in the clean economy export roughly twice the value of a typical U.S. job ($20,000 versus $10,000). The electric vehicles (EV), green chemical products, and lighting segments are all especially manufacturing intensive while the biofuels, green chemicals, and EV industries are highly export intensive.
The clean economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole. Median wages in the clean economy—meaning those in the middle of the distribution—are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages. Yet a disproportionate percentage of jobs in the clean economy are staffed by workers with relatively little formal education in moderately well-paying “green collar” occupations.
Among regions, the South has the largest number of clean economy jobs though the West has the largest share relative to its population. Seven of the 21 states with at least 50,000 clean economy jobs are in the South. Among states, California has the highest number of clean jobs but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.
Most of the country’s clean economy jobs and recent growth concentrate within the largest metropolitan areas. Some 64 percent of all current clean economy jobs and 75 percent of its newer jobs created from 2003 to 2010 congregate in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.
The clean economy permeates all of the nation’s metropolitan areas, but it manifests itself in varied configurations. Metropolitan area clean economies can be categorized into four-types: service-oriented, manufacturing, public sector, and balanced. New York, through mass transit, embodies a service orientation; so does San Francisco through professional services and Las Vegas through architectural services. Many Midwestern and Southern metros like Louisville; Cleveland; Greenville, SC; and Little Rock—but also San Jose in the West—host clean economies that are heavily manufacturing oriented. State capitals are among those with a disproportionate share of clean jobs in the public sector (e.g. Harrisburg, Sacramento, Raleigh, and Springfield). Finally, some metros—such as Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Portland, OR; and Los Angeles— balance multi-dimensional clean economies.
Strong industry clusters boost metros’ growth performance in the clean economy. Clustering entails proximity to businesses in similar or related industries. Establishments located in counties containing a significant number of jobs from other establishments in the same segment grew much faster than more isolated establishments from 2003 to 2010. Overall, clustered establishments grew at a rate that was 1.4 percentage points faster each year than non-clustered (more isolated) establishments. Examples include professional environmental services in Houston, solar photovoltaic in Los Angeles, fuel cells in Boston, and wind in Chicago.
The measurements and trends presented here offer a mixed picture of a diverse array of environmentally-oriented industry segments growing modestly even as a sub-set of clean energy, energy efficiency, and related segments grow much faster than the nation (albeit from a small base) and in ways that are producing a desirable array of jobs, including in manufacturing and export-oriented fields.
As to what governments, policymakers, and regional leaders should do to catalyze faster and broader growth across the U.S. clean economy, it is clear that the private sector will play the lead role, but governments have a role too. In this connection, the fact that significant policy uncertainties and gaps are weakening market demand for clean economy goods and services, chilling finance, and raising questions about the clean innovation pipeline reinforces the need for engagement and reform. Not only are other nations bidding to secure global production and the jobs that come with it but the United States currently risks failing to exploit growing world demand. And so this report concludes that vigorous private sector-led growth needs to be co-promoted through complementary engagements by all levels of the nation’s federal system to ensure the existence of well-structured markets, a favorable investment climate, and a rich stock of cutting-edge technology—as well as strong regional cast to all efforts. Along these lines, the report recommends that governments help:
Scale up the market by taking steps to catalyze vibrant domestic demand for low-carbon and environmentally-oriented goods and services. Intensified “green” procurement efforts by all levels of government are one such market-making engagement. But there are others. Congress and the federal government could help by putting a price on carbon, passing a national clean energy standard (CES), and moving to ensure more rational cost recovery on new transmission links for the delivery of renewable energy to urban load centers. States can adopt or strengthen their own clean energy standards, reduce the initial costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption, and pursue electricity market reform to facilitate the use of clean and efficient solutions. And localities can also support adoption by expediting permitting for green projects, adopting green building and other standards, and adopting innovative financing tools to reduce the upfront costs of investing in clean technologies.
Ensure adequate finance by moving to address the serious shortage of affordable, risk-tolerant, and larger-scale capital that now impedes the scale-up of numerous clean economy industry segments. On this front Congress should create an emerging technology deployment finance entity to address the commercialization “Valley of Death” and also work to rationalize and reform the myriad tax provisions and incentives that currently encourage capital investments in clean economy projects. States, for their part, can supplement private lending activity by providing guarantees and participating loans or initial capital for revolving loan funds targeting clean economy projects using new or improved technologies. And for that matter regions and localities can also help narrow the deployment finance gap by helping to reduce the costs and uncertainty of projects by expediting their physical build-out, whether by managing zoning and permitting issues or even pre-approving sites.
Drive innovation by investing both more and differently in the clean economy innovation system. With the needed major scale-up of investment levels unlikely for now, Congress at least needs to embrace continued incremental growth of key energy and environmental research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budgets. At the same time, Congress should continue its recent institutional experimentation through measured expansion of such recent start-ups as the Energy Frontier Research Centers, ARPA-E, and Energy Innovation Hubs programs. Two worthy additional experiments would be the creation of a water sciences innovation center and the establishment of a regional clean economy consortia initiative. States can also advance the clean economy through maintaining and expanding their own RD&D efforts, perhaps by tapping state clean energy funds where they exist. All should be focused and prioritized through a rigorous, data-driven analysis of the nature, growth, and strengths of local clean economy innovation clusters.
In addition, the “Sizing the Clean Economy“ emphasizes that in working on each of these fronts federal, state, and regional leaders need to:
Focus on regions, meaning that all parties need to place detailed knowledge of local industry dynamics and regional growth strategies near the center of efforts to advance the clean economy. While the federal government should increase its investment in new regional innovation and industry cluster programs such as the Economic Development Administration’s i6 Green Challenge, states should work to improve the information base about local clean economy industry clusters and move to support regionally crafted initiatives for advancing them. Regional actors, meanwhile, should take the lead in using data and analysis to understand the local clean economy in detail; identify competitive strengths; and then move to formulate strong, “bottom up” strategies for overcoming key clusters’ binding constraints. Employing cluster intelligence and strategy to design and tune regional workforce development strategies will be a critical regional priority.
***
The measurements, trends, and discussions offered here provide an encouraging but also challenging assessment of the ongoing development of the clean economy in the United States and its regions. In many respects, the analysis warrants excitement. As the nation continues to search for new sources of high-quality growth, the present findings depict a sizable and diverse array of industry segments that is—in key private-sector areas—expanding rapidly at a time of sluggish national growth. With smart policy support, broader, more rapid growth seems possible. At the same time, however, the information presented here is challenging, most notably because the growth of the clean economy has almost certainly been depressed by significant policy problems and uncertainties.
That question is: Will the nation marshal the will to make the most of those industries?
SOURCE: The Brookings Institution | | More Details | | | | | | OU launches ambitious and innovative green research center | | 2011-07-19 14:21:25 | During the official launch of Oakland University's Clean Energy Research Center on Thursday, the School of Engineering and Computer Science and the OU INCubator welcomed hundreds of federal, state and local officials; community and business leaders; alternative energy industry representatives and others interested in a clean and prosperous future for Michigan.
"At a time when the struggles of our state and national economies appear in headlines every day of the week, and when the quality of our environment and our reliance on fossil fuels is no less important, we're excited to see this new center step forward as part of the solution," said Oakland University President Gary Russi.
Attendees of Thursday's event had the opportunity to learn a great deal about the ambitious partnership between SECS and OU INC, as well as to view a variety of cutting-edge demonstrations and exhibits offered by the CERC, OU INC client companies and other clean energy enterprises and organizations.
The center has garnered support through an initial grant from the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth and its private-sector partner Energy Systems Group, as well through a number of public and private organizations committed to the greening and revitalization of Michigan and the nation.
"Today's tremendous and enthusiastic turnout simply confirms what immense potential the green industries have in Michigan's future," said David Spencer, executive director of OU INC. "Our goal will be to put powerful and proven business tools in the hands of entrepreneurs with the creativity, ambition and dedication to help put the state's 21st century economy into high gear."
The CERC will focus it efforts on industrial energy audits, commercialization of new technology, securing investment capital and transferring clean and alternative energy technologies to existing infrastructure. While developing an educational platform that enables OU faculty and students to research and develop clean energy alternatives, it will also look to build commercial partnerships with Michigan businesses.
Projects will target the development and enhancement of energy efficient technologies and advanced lighting, combined heat and power, solar, biomass, wind and geothermal systems. In fact, multiple projects have been completed or are in various stages of development.
As part of its academic mission, the CERC will provide students and faculty with the best hands-on, real-world learning environment possible, particularly through outreach and economic development initiatives.
"Oakland University has long been successful in offering its students a strong theoretical and practical foundation in professional education," said Louay Chamra, Dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science. "Without question, the CERC will expand opportunities for our students and ultimate make our industry and our quality of life better in countless ways."
To learn more about the CERC, its projects, client companies and more, visit oakland.edu/cerc.
SOURCE: OAKLAND UNIVERSITY | | More Details | | | | | | Fred Upton Pushes Vote to Kill His Own Light Bulb Efficiency Standards | | 2011-07-18 19:46:50 | Lately it seems that the House Republican leadership is against everything that isn’t pre-approved by Big Oil or the Tea Party. Perhaps the most outlandish example of this Groucho Marx approach to public policy is today’s vote on the BULB Act, H.R. 2417. It would repeal the energy efficiency standards for light bulbs established in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, or EISA, P.L. 110-140. It would also prevent California from setting its own light bulb efficiency standards. The original author of the provision is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), who is now supporting the repeal of his own idea after conservatives attacked it along with other clean energy programs.
EISA, with Rep. Upton’s efficiency measure, passed the House in 2007 by a bipartisan vote of 319-100, with support from 49.7 percent of Republicans who voted and 98 percent of Democratic votes. President George W. Bush signed it into law.
Afterwards, Rep. Upton bragged in a press release, “Upton Measure to Upgrade Energy Efficiency Standards for all Light Bulbs Now Law”:
Current incandescent bulbs on store shelves are obsolete and highly inefficient — only 10% of the energy consumed by each bulb is for light with 90% wasted on unnecessary heat. Today’s incandescent bulbs employ the same technology as the bulbs Thomas Edison first created over 120 years ago.
This common sense, bipartisan approach partners with American industry to save energy as well as help foster the creation of new domestic manufacturing jobs. By upgrading to more efficient light bulbs, we will help preserve energy resources and reduce harmful emission [sic], all the while saving American families billions of dollars in their electric bills — and the benefits will be as easy as a flip of the switch.
Interestingly, this press release was removed from Rep. Upton’s website.
Rep. Upton was correct in 2007. EISA’s light bulb efficiency standards would save about $100 per household annually in lower electricity costs, or about $12 billion per year when fully implemented. And despite false claims to the contrary, incandescent light bulbs will still be available, but they will use 28 percent to 33 percent less energy.
The new light bulb efficiency standards are supported by the light bulb manufacturing industry. “When this bill was passed, it was passed by people who knew how to make light bulbs,” says Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs at Philips, a leading light bulb producer. “Everyone supported it. And since then, it’s created more choice for consumers — we have two incandescent bulbs on the market that weren’t there before.”
Upton defended the efficiency standards in 2009. At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, he said:
Our work on light bulbs wasn’t an arbitrary mandate. We didn’t just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.
But Upton reversed course after the Republicans won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 election and conservatives attacked his handiwork. Archconservative radio host Rush Limbaugh savaged Upton and his bill:
This would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee. This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way.
Fox TV personality Glenn Beck called Rep. Upton “all socialist” in November 2010 for his authorship of the efficiency measure.
Upton attempted to appease the right wing rather than defend his program from these false attacks. He promised, “If I become chairman, we’ll be reexamining the light bulb issue, no problem.”
Since November he has backed away even further from his energy innovation. The repeal bill is coming to the floor today after bypassing the normal legislative process, including hearings. Ranking Energy Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to Upton:
H.R. 2417 was introduced earlier this week on July 6, 2011. Obviously, the Committee has not had the opportunity to hold hearings on the legislation. Moreover, the Committee has not held any hearing — legislative or oversight — on the subject matter of the legislation.
We urge you to continue the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s long history of open debate by adhering to the tenets of regular order.
H.R. 2417, if it becomes law in any form, will actually hurt the economy and jobs by creating tremendous uncertainty for the companies that began to innovate by developing new, money-saving lighting products. Repealing it breaks the rules in the middle of the game after these companies began to follow the law.
It’s likely that Upton wants to rush through the repeal of his law because it is opposed by the Koch-brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity. Koch Industry employees were among Rep. Upton’s top 10 donors in 2010.
H.R. 2417 will be debated on under suspension of the rules, which prohibits any amendments and limits debate to 20 minutes per side. Rep. Upton, therefore, is not “reexamining” his invention — he is speeding its destruction.
This is but the latest example of House Republican leaders promoting a right-wing, dirty energy agenda that harms families and businesses rather than investing in innovation, new products, and jobs — even if they came up with the idea in the first place.
SOURCE: thinkprogress.org | | More Details | | | | | | Dow Makes Energy from Recycled Plastic | | 2011-07-15 13:25:45 | Pilot Test Successfully Demonstrates Ultimate End-of-Life Option for Recycled Plastic
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) announced today that it has successfully demonstrated the use of recycled plastic to generate energy. The successful pilot test measured how plastic that has been reused and recycled to the full extent possible can be used as fuel for an ultimate end-of-life option instead of going to a landfill for disposal.
The pilot test found that 96 percent of available energy was recovered after incinerating 578 pounds of used plastic in a kiln at one of Dow’s waste treatment facilities. The energy recovered was equivalent to 11.1 million Btu’s of natural gas and was used as fuel for Dow’s incinerator during the test. The trial was completed in compliance with regulatory permits.
Linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) scrap film generated in one of Dow’s extrusion laboratories was used in the test. The film was the same type commonly used for packaging food and consumer products. The test took place at Dow’s second-largest U.S. manufacturing location in Midland, Mich.
“The purpose of the test was to collect data showing that used plastic can provide a valuable source of energy and ultimately help reduce our need for natural gas or other fossil fuels,” said Jeff Wooster, Plastics Sustainability Leader for Dow’s North American Plastics business. “The study results demonstrate that almost all of the available energy stored in used plastic can be captured and reused as opposed to being buried in a landfill.”
While most thermoplastics can be reprocessed, there currently are limited end-of-life options for certain types of used plastic packaging, such as some flexible films and containers made from a combination of materials.
“Energy recovery and chemical transformation do not replace the traditional means of recycling plastics – they extend and complement it,” Wooster explained. "The U.S. lags behind many other countries that capture trapped energy from recovered materials. Recovering embedded energy in recycled plastic is a ‘best-in-class’ approach used in Europe and other regions. Our next step is to help find a way to scale up this more sustainable practice in the United States.”
The sustainability advantages of energy recovery include utilizing natural gas or oil first to make plastics, which can then be used, reused, recycled and recovered at end-of-life, capturing the energy content of the original feedstock. Energy recovery allows more utility captured from every natural gas or oil molecule.
“Energy recovery is a clean, reliable, renewable source of energy having less environmental impact than many other sources of energy,” Wooster explained. “We look at this endeavor as another way in which Dow can deliver on its core value of protecting the planet – by harnessing its innovation engine to help customers, communities and society while encouraging others to do the same.”
The recycle-to-energy recovery trial provided the concept validation for the submission and approval of one of several energy efficiency projects recently chosen to receive funding through Dow’s Energy Intensity Improvement Fund. The $100 million investment fund targets Dow projects designed to help reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.
Dow is committed to working with value chain partners, industry associations and others in the field to increase the availability and viability of end-of-life options including mechanical recycling, chemical transformation and energy recovery. These efforts are another step Dow is taking toward achieving its long-term vision of recycling 100 percent of used packaging.
SOURCE: businesswire.com | | More Details | | | | | | FortisBC launches renewable natural gas program for residential customers | | 2011-07-15 13:18:10 | Renewable natural gas will help British Columbia fight climate change
FortisBC announced today it has launched its renewable natural gas product offering for residential customers in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Interior and the Kootenays. Eligible customers now have the option of designating 10 per cent of their household’s natural gas usage as renewable natural gas. FortisBC will then inject an equivalent amount of renewable natural gas into its distribution system from local renewable natural gas projects. Customers will be subscribed on a first-come, first-served basis, for about an additional $4 per month, based on an average annual consumption of 95 gigajoules (GJs).
“I want to encourage our customers to sign up for renewable natural gas. By signing up, customers are helping create a more sustainable future for our province, reducing their carbon footprint and supporting a carbon-neutral B.C.-made product,” said Doug Stout, vice president, energy solutions and external relations, FortisBC.
The only portion of the bill that would change for customers who subscribe to renewable natural gas is the cost of gas. Their cost of gas will now be made up of 10 per cent of the renewable natural gas cost and 90 per cent of the standard cost of gas. Subscribers will not be locked into a contract and can opt-out at any time at no cost.
“FortisBC is making it easy for families to choose a greener, more sustainable way to heat and power their homes and take action on climate change,” said Rich Coleman, minister of energy and mines. “This renewable fuel of the future will also help the Province to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.”
As renewable natural gas is also considered carbon neutral in B.C., subscribers’ carbon tax will be credited by 10 per cent. FortisBC’s renewable natural gas offering was recently granted Carbon Neutral Product status by Offsetters in B.C., Canada’s leading carbon management solutions provider, after assessing the expected lifecycle emissions savings of the program.
“I commend FortisBC for being the first utility in North America to offer renewable natural gas to residential customers,” said James Tansey, CEO of Offsetters. “It’s an innovative approach that allows their customers to take action on climate change in a simple and cost-effective way.”
Renewable natural gas is created by capturing biogas from sources such as landfills and agricultural waste, and then upgrading it to pipeline-quality gas, before being added to FortisBC’s distribution system. Renewable natural gas is also interchangeable with conventional natural gas, so FortisBC can use its existing pipelines and changes are not required to customers’ appliances. FortisBC estimates that the total greenhouse gas savings in the program’s first year will be about 5,000 tonnes, equal to removing almost 1,000 cars off the road each year or keeping 3.8 million pounds of waste out of landfills, based on delivering 100,000 GJ of renewable natural gas to the FortisBC distribution system.
As additional supply becomes available later this year, FortisBC expects to be able to expand the offering to more residential customers. The company also hopes to be in a position to make the product offering available to commercial customers in 2012 throughout the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Interior and the Kootenays. As a demonstration of potential commercial use of renewable natural gas, Central Heat Distribution Limited (CHDL) recently began purchasing the first 1,000 GJs of their commitment to designate 10,000 GJs of the natural gas in their operations as renewable natural gas from FortisBC.
CHDL’s district energy system serves downtown Vancouver businesses and residents, relying on natural gas to generate thermal energy through its natural gas boilers.
SOURCE: OFFSETTERS | | More Details | | | | | | Overwaitea Food Group stores roll out sustainable sushi options | | 2011-07-14 12:55:46 | Starting today, the Overwaitea Food Group (OFG) takes another major step forward in its commitment to provide customers with ocean-friendly seafood by offering locally produced, sustainably sourced sushi products in its Lower Mainland stores. Over seventy-five percent of the seafood in OFG sushi products will meet SeaChoice's science-based criteria for "Best Choice" (green) or "Some Concerns" (yellow) sustainable seafood rankings.
"We are proud of reaching another milestone in our long-term commitment to ocean health and sustainable fishing industry practices," said OFG President Steve van der Leest. "We're working hard with SeaChoice to help our local suppliers become more environmentally sustainable, which in turns contributes to sustainable and thriving local economies."
OFG was the first Canadian retailer to partner with SeaChoice on a sustainable seafood initiative. Over the past two years in support of this, OFG has distributed nearly 400,000 SeaChoice sustainable seafood guides, discontinued several red-listed, unsustainable seafood products, and continues to work with local suppliers to seek and identify sustainable seafood alternatives for customers. This sushi will be expanded to additional regions in the coming weeks.
"SeaChoice is very proud of OFG's ongoing commitment to sustainable seafood. This sustainable sushi initiative represents significant progress" said Bill Wareham, SeaChoice representative and marine conservation specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation. "OFG is really living up to its sustainability commitments and is demonstrating leadership in creating positive change in the marketplace that will result in healthier oceans."
OFG operates a total of 123 stores in Western Canada. The company has been in operation for more than 95 years, with its first store originally located in New Westminster, BC. With the support of 14,000 team members, OFG serves over 80 communities with six store formats — Save-On-Foods, Overwaitea Foods, PriceSmart Foods, Cooper's Foods, Urban Fare and Bulkley Valley Wholesale. OFG received its first Environmental Leadership Award from the federal government in 1993.
Formed in 2006, SeaChoice is a national program that provides science-based sustainability assessments of seafood to Canadian consumers, fishermen, chefs and businesses. The SeaChoice program is operated by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecology Action Centre, Living Oceans Society and Sierra Club BC, working in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program.
SOURCE: DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION | | More Details | | | | | | Sustainability Expert PE INTERNATIONAL Releases Whitepaper: "Ten Insider Tips for a Compelling Business Case" | | 2011-07-14 12:52:53 | It's hard work integrating sustainability into a company's strategic plan. It's not enough to reduce carbon and gain certifications. Success requires winning over their peers and bosses. Managers are increasingly facing the challenge of convincing upper management levels and are struggling to prove that their strategy is both achievable and something that will actually add value to the business.
Successful buy-in requires a comprehensive plan rooted in a clear business case. Not all business cases, however, are created equal. Although the details vary from one company to another, an effective sustainability plan communicates a sense of direction and purpose, unifies efforts, sets goals and priorities, builds motivation and momentum, and aligns sustainability goals with a company's overall business objectives.
To assist with sustainability planning PE INTERNATIONAL has released a new whitepaper containing ten insider tips for helping sustainability managers to build a compelling business case for their organization. More than 1,500 successfully completed projects and over 20 years of experience as an expert in sustainability are the basis for this exclusive set of guidelines.
"All too many sustainability plans and initiatives fail to become reality because the CEO, CFO or CIO does not buy in to the project," says John Heckman, Managing Director of PE INTERNATIONAL, Inc. based in North America. "You need to minimize this risk by having a detailed planning phase - it's essential for the success of the whole project. This is your chance to harness the current market trend and reap the benefits at the same time."
And the benefits of sustainability are enormous. Top line revenue growth, brand enhancement, reduced costs and much more are a clear added value for companies of all kinds. According to a new global study1, more than two-thirds of businesses are strengthening their commitment to sustainability.
SOURCE: fivewinds.com | | More Details | | | | | | TTC Wins 2nd Award for Green Procurement Program | | 2011-07-14 12:48:17 | In July 2008, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) became the first transit authority in Canada to adopt and implement a Green Procurement Policy (GPP) and Program with the support of Five Winds International. By further integrating environmental considerations into the products and services it acquires, the TTC has been positioning itself as a leader in Green Procurement in North America, and globally in the transit sector.
Since implementation of the GPP, the TTC has received a considerable amount of recognition for its efforts to promote sustainable development. Most notably, the TTC was featured in the March/April 2010 issue of Summit, Canada's magazine on public sector purchasing, in an article titled Driving Sustainable Transit in Canada through Green Procurement. In October 2010, the TTC was awarded the 2010 Leadership in Green Procurement Award at the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Public Procurement Council (CPPC) in Ottawa, Ontario.
Today, we are pleased to announce that the TTC was recognized with a second award for its Green Procurement Policy and Program at the Canadian Urban Transit Association's (CUTA) Annual Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Innovation Award, one of the 2011 CUTA Corporate Recognition Awards, was designed to highlight successes and achievements related to the introduction, development and use of successful innovative techniques at the organizational level.
For more information on green procurement or Five Winds' Strategic Sustainability Services, please contact Jenn Clipsham at +1 (519) 822-6668 ext. 222.
SOURCE: FIVE WINDS | | More Details | | | | | | NYIT Trains Sustainability Experts to Meet the Needs of the Green Market | | 2011-07-14 12:33:50 | NYIT will meet the demands of the growing, multi-billion-dollar green building market by training professionals in sustainable building practices.
The nine-month Sustainable Adviser Certificate Program will be offered at NYIT starting in Sept. 2011, for professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, construction, real estate development, building, facilities management, utilities, and municipalities.
The U.S. green building market increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2010, according to McGraw-Hill Construction’s Green Outlook. It is expected to reach $135 billion by 2015. Under the direction of NYIT’s expert instructors, professionals will be able to identify key practices of sustainable building, analyze costs and benefits of sustainable building measures, set a sustainable design goal for project development, and more.
Course content will address many types of construction and development through an interactive format with discussion-driven presentations. Participants and instructors will also visit exemplary projects.
An information session will be held on Wednesday, July 27, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Anna Rubin Hall, room 303 at NYIT’s Old Westbury campus.
To R.S.V.P. for the information session, please contact Jannette Knowles at 516.686.7491or jknowles@nyit.edu. For more information about the program, visit http://www.nyit.edu/extended_education/sustainable_building.
About NYIT
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in more than 90 fields of study, including architecture and design; arts and sciences; education; engineering and computing sciences; health professions; management; and osteopathic medicine. A non-profit independent, private institution of higher education, NYIT has more than 15,000 students attending campuses on Long Island and Manhattan, online, and at its global campuses. NYIT sponsors 11 NCAA Division II programs and one Division I team.
Led by President Edward Guiliano, NYIT is guided by its mission to provide career-oriented professional education, offer access to opportunity to all qualified students, and support applications-oriented research that benefits the larger world. To date, 89,000 graduates have received degrees from NYIT. For more information, visit nyit.edu.
SOURCE: NYIT | | More Details | | | | | | BTC awarded $200,000 grant to create aquatic transfer degree program | | 2011-07-14 12:31:13 | Bellingham Technical College will be receiving a $200,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to create a new degree program that helps low income people enter the aquatic conservation industry.
The project is a collaboration among BTC, Northwest Indian College and Western Washington University’s Huxley College.
The grant will allow BTC to expand its current fisheries degree program as well as create a new transfer degree program.
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The transfer program at BTC will be aligned with degree programs at Huxley and the NWIC native environmental science degree program, giving students several options for continuing their education or finding a career.
Patricia McKeown, president of BTC, believes the grant will allow the three schools to create a program that embraces their individual strengths.
“You have BTC that has that foundation of hands-on skills where students are exposed to learning the skills to work ... Northwest Indian College that has that piece of native environmental sciences that’s so unique to them, then you have Western which is really a leader in the whole environmental sciences arena in terms of Huxley college,” McKeown said. “It’s a wonderful thing that the Allen Foundation is supporting this; it came at a perfect time to move this initiative forward.”
The grant is part of the foundation’s asset-building program, which is designed to “support organizations that help people attain financial stability and security,” said Bill Vesneski, evaluation director with the foundation.
“One of the appeals with the college is they’re working with these communities, they are working with people who are economically vulnerable,” Vesneski said. “This program is designed to help those (people) in addition to being academically rigorous.”
BTC will start enrolling more students in the current fisheries program - capacity will be expanded by up to 130 additional students over two years - but the transfer degree curriculum needs to be designed before people can choose that option, McKeown said.
The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation awarded $620,000 to Whatcom County this winter, with grants also going to Lummi Nation Service Organization and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Whatcom County. In all, Whatcom County has received $2.1 million from the foundation since it was created in 1990. This is the first grant from the foundation to BTC.
SOURCE: BELLINGHAM TECHNICAL COLLEGE | | More Details | | | | | | Curio House: Home at Last | | 2011-07-14 12:16:13 | Curio, the beautiful zero-net energy solar house designed and constructed by students from the Boston Architectural College partnering with engineering students from Tufts University has come home to Massachusetts.
Last seen by over 200,000 onlookers on the Washington Mall a year ago, it was then part of the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, a competition about the future of architecture among 20 schools of architecture from around the globe.
Curio House, which produces its own electricity, recycles its waste water and even stores heat from the sun in the thick glass of its south-facing patio doors was unveiled November 16, 2010 as the first residence in the “Community Green” near Sandwich, Massachusetts, a project of the Housing Assistance Corporation of Cape Cod. Community Green eventually will include 57 rental apartments, four single-family homes and an Enterprise Center that will host job-training programs for the formerly homeless and other low-income Cape residents.
Dozens of people turned out for the ribbon-cutting event including Becca Wolfson and Billy Traverse, the young couple who will now live in the house and act as caretakers for the Community Green property as more buildings are added to the project. Always imagined as more than a competition entry, Curio House project director and construction manager, Michelle Stadelman, a BAC student when the house was designed, now a BAC Master of Architecture graduate said, "It has been a dream come true to see our vision come to life."
The Curio is an 800-square-foot building with 650 square feet of living space. It includes an entryway, a bathroom, and a combined studio of a kitchen, living space and bedroom. It has 28 photovoltaic solar panels that use micro-inverters to allow the homeowner flexibility in repairing, replacing, modifying and expanding the system. A solar thermal water system provides the home's hot water, even in frigid New England winters. It features heat glass technology that captures low-angle winter sun energy and then disperses it, even at night, to cut down on heating costs. Exterior roller shades and an overhang on south-facing roof blocks summer sun and keeps the house cool. Large windows reduce need for electric lights and make home feel bigger. A monitoring system tracks energy use in real time.
"No one will ever mistake this for an ordinary house. Indeed, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows and 28 photovoltaic solar panels, it's not a classic Cape." said Rick Presbrey, CEO and President of Housing Assistance Corp.
SOURCE: BOSTON ARCHITECTURAL COLLEGE | | More Details | | | | | | Like a lightbulb going off | | 2011-07-14 12:08:42 | Imagine being able to see to the penny how much it costs to use your jumbo high definition television or your tiny nightlight – in real time. That’s what a dozen University Hills residents did last summer as part of a “Smart Home” project aimed at reducing energy consumption.
UC Irvine researchers David Kirkby and Daniel Stokols think consumers should be able to see the cost of using their appliances as easily as they spot grocery price tags. Their premise is that such information can help save money and reduce wasteful energy consumption. To their surprise, preliminary data show that while some participants cut electricity consumption by as much as half, others who were already energy misers increased theirs slightly.
“This is not purely an engineering problem,” says Kirkby, a physics professor who launched the uci@home project. “It’s people like you and me who consume energy, it’s not the things you plug into the wall.”
They are now analyzing whether the pilot program paid off, and have applied for funding from the California Energy Commission to continue their research. Kirkby designed the system’s electronics, while Stokols, professor of social ecology, suggested effective feedback mechanisms. They believe this point-of-use information – systems that blink red, yellow or green, whir, hum and otherwise interact with the user – can effectively alter ingrained behavior.
“Once consumers are aware of their energy use patterns, they have a better chance of changing them,” Stokols says.
The sunny living room of Sergey Nizkorodov’s two-story home in University Hills houses a desktop computer, 22-inch monitor, ceiling-mounted projector, surround-sound equipment and a DVD player. Had you visited last summer, you might have noticed all the equipment plugged into a single power strip, not unlike media components in homes across the country.
The strip in Nizkorodov’s home, however, was “smart,” feeding data wirelessly every three seconds to a household hub. There, it was aggregated, graphed and stored along with the data from five other identical setups. Interactive strips blinked different colors depending on energy usage, the room temperature and lighting. Occasionally, they chirped and sent out musical notes as a way to communicate their message: “See how much energy you’re using!”
This feedback allowed Nizkorodov, a UCI chemistry professor, and his wife, Elena Koriakina, to better understand the nuances of their electricity consumption. However the study has not significantly changed their habits.
“If anything our electricity usage went up a bit after we learned how much more other people spend for the electricity,” he says.
That may be because he and his wife were already extremely energy conscious, spending just $30 a month. They keep the lights so low that friends complain at times.
But Joerg Meyer, who until this fall was a UCI assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science, still misses the positive reinforcement of the green lights and descending chimes when he was being energy frugal. He readily agreed to sign on because of his $300 electric bills. He figured it might be his flat screen TV, which as part of the experiment did cause an annoyingly large red light to flash when it was on too long. But by logging on to his computer, he was able to spy the real energy hogs: the 1200 watts worth of incandescent lightbulbs he had blazing in the living room and the kitchen.
Meyer, who recently moved to the Bay Area to work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said he has permanently altered his power habits. He uses only compact fluorescent lightbulbs, which he turns on in one section of a room at a time, and he flicks off lights when he leaves the room. As a result, he has cut his electricity bills in half. He thinks everyone should be able to log in and see how and where they’re using energy.
Kirkby says he and Stokols are intrigued by the variety of user patterns exhibited in the randomly selected pilot group. He hopes all of them will continue good habits, noting that even small changes can add up to large savings for the environment.
“If half of America’s households cut their energy usage by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking 8 million cars off the road,” he says. “That’s a big impact.”
SOURCE: UC IRVINE | | More Details | | | | | | Green Jobs Attract Graduates | | 2011-06-29 10:34:16 | When the anchorman Howard Beale uttered his famous vituperations in the 1976 film “Network” (“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”), he was a grizzled, alcoholic veteran of the television rat race, at the climax of a long, slow boil.
Rachael Kleinberger was luckier (or smarter): she already knew she wanted out at age 25, quitting her job at a reality-TV production company for a position at a nonprofit organization focused on the environment.
“I want to do something helpful,” she said, “or do something at the end of the day that’s like, ‘This makes me feel good that I spent this much time doing it.’ ”
One doesn’t leave a promising media job for just anything these days. Ms. Kleinberger is one of a new wave of recent college graduates entering a career field that, like blogging and social media strategy, hardly existed a decade ago: environmental sustainability.
Suddenly, “sustainability” seems to resonate with the sex appeal of “dot com” or “start-up,” appealing to droves of ambitious young innovators. Amelia Byers, operations director for Idealist.org, a Web site that lists paid and unpaid opportunities for nonprofit groups and social enterprise companies — some 5,000 of which are environmental organizations — said the number of jobs related to environmental work has roughly tripled in the last three years. “A lot of new graduates are coming out of a world where volunteerism and service has been something that has helped define their generation,” she said. “Finding a job with meaning is an important value to them.”
The rapid expansion of green jobs isn’t confined to the nonprofit sector. There is money to be made here as well. Ivan Kerbel, director of career development for the Yale School of Management, a graduate-level business program, noted that environmental issues like reducing waste and carbon footprints were increasingly important to corporations of all kinds, something business students are recognizing. Even ultra-ambitious M.B.A. candidates with C-suite aspirations are integrating issues like sustainability into their education, he said.
“The leading companies have taken it on in a way that means you don’t have to feel like you’re self-ghettoized into this functional niche,” he said.
Ms. Byers attributed the growth in part to a generational shift toward “values driven” professions. Unsurprisingly, such jobs are often quite hip.
Ms. Kleinberger, now 26, of Santa Monica, Calif., said it was important that browbeating was not in her job description; creativity and inclusion were paramount. As part of her job at Global Inheritance, a nonprofit group that uses arts and creativity to encourage environmental sustainability, she helped organize D.J. performances, powered entirely off the grid, at the Coachella music festival in April; last month, the group took energy-generating bicycles that charge cellphones and iPods to the Indy 500.
“The way that they approach sustainability and conservation issues is really fun and innovative,” she said about her employer. “We fit right in at Coachella, let’s put it that way.”
By AUSTIN CONSIDINE | | More Details | | | | | | The rise in responsible careers | | 2011-06-20 22:05:20 | The concept of a “responsible career” might sound fanciful in a global labour market under pressure from cuts and downturns. But despite the turbulent economy it seems the green jobs market is flourishing.
Worldwide salaries of “green collar workers” increased by 4 per cent during 2010, according to an industry study by Acre Resources, a sustainability recruitment specialist, and Acona, a corporate responsibility consultancy.
Sustainability has become so enmeshed with commercial interests that career choices which would once have required a senior manager to step off the career ladder can now lead to greater professional opportunities and a higher salary.
But “sustainability” can mean different things to different people. Broadly speaking it amounts to an attempt to reduce the impact of commercial activity on the environment and society.
Professor Judi Marshall at Lancaster University Management School has made a study of executives who changed career pathways in search of work that makes a more positive social impact.
She and her colleague Svenja Tams have published a paper on how growing concerns about the social and environmental impact of organisations have provoked debates about responsibility in managerial careers.
There is often, she says, a trigger that precipitates a change. One of the key questions that those thinking about making a change often ask is: do I bring all of myself to my work?
Bryn Parry was an illustrator living in Wiltshire in 2007 when he paid a hospital visit to men and women recovering from injuries suffered while serving in Iraq.
The experience was, as he puts it, “devastating” and led him and his wife Emma to set up the Help for Heroes charity. Originally begun as little more than a sponsored bike ride, the charity has since raised nearly £100m and has provided assistance for hundreds of men and women wounded in service.
With no prior experience, the couple found themselves at the helm of a large national charity. Unable to combine the demands of the charity with their former jobs, they were forced to sell their old illustration business.
But, he says, their reasoning has never waivered. “It quickly became an all-consuming passion and although I did feel sad when the business was sold, our lives had changed so much that we just ran with it.”
His lack of knowledge of how charities are run was less a hindrance than a new challenge: “We had 23 years running a small business so we had a background in marketing, sales and creativity and we’re used to improvising. These skills are a good basis for starting an organisation in this field.”
For those who want a career change that does not require such a complete change of circumstances, there are many professional roles within sustainability being advertised.
Just 10 years ago those interested in the area had very few places to look, says David White. An IT worker with an interest in the environment, Mr White could not find anywhere that listed possible green jobs for those with a technical background. In 2002 he filled that gap with his own company, Environment Job, an online jobs board.
Now, he says, he advertises exactly the sort of jobs he wanted. He has noticed a change in the nature of the posts, which reflects shifting interests within the sector.
Areas that rely on financial support from local authorities, such as cycle schemes, have suffered, while jobs in renewable energy have continued to grow as government subsidies flood in and companies look for ways to save money.
In the UK, more than three quarters of small and medium sized “cleantech” businesses say they plan to recruit in the next year, and sustainability recruitment specialist Allen & York believes half a million jobs in the renewable energy sector could be created by 2020 and 50,000 jobs in the waste industry.
More broadly, sustainability has been integrated into companies’ growth plans. Stefano Giolito was working in marketing at an international level for Unilever when he saw the chance in 2010 to switch his career and develop the firm’s growing sustainability team.
Despite having no specific experience within the area he recognised that his knowledge of disparate parts of the company would provide the requisite skills.
“I saw that Unilever was not just looking for a sustainability specialist but someone who understood the dynamics of the business, and these were requirements I met,” he says.
The sustainability team now contains a mixture of Unilever employees with a background in different areas of the business, plus newcomers with specific sustainability training.
What excites Mr Giolito about the role is the opportunity to drive Unilever’s business agenda by looking at new products from the point of view of sustainability.
One important subject is water. As the commodity becomes more scarce throughout the world, and thus more expensive, it will be increasingly important to create products that can be used with less water.
In response, the team helped to come up with a form of washing powder sold in emerging economies that required just one bucket of water to rinse clothes, rather than three or four. By creating the products now, the company hopes to provide customers with what they need before they realise they need it.
But this business sensibility can be grating to some in the industry.
Those who followed their morals into the sector can be discouraged by the attitude of those who did not, says David Bent at Forum for the Future, a sustainable development non-government organisation.
“I was at a sustainability event the other week and a company was talking about maximising commercial ``return``s from renewable energy. A member of the audience asked where the morals were. But the thing is, this is what victory looks like. If you want business to take sustainability seriously then you have to realise that not everyone is motivated by morals now that this issue has been mainstreamed.”
Forum for the Future works with corporate clients such as eBay and O2 to think up sustainable development plans that could help them.
Despite the recession, Mr Bent has found that companies are maintaining their interest in sustainability, even those suffering budget cuts.
Trained as an accountant, he moved to the company after realising that his former profession did not yield sufficient interest for him.
“At university I’d been heavily involved in what is now called sustainability, but what was then called development and green issues.
“I did think about having a career in that field but I didn’t think there would be a career path in it. This was in 1998 when the idea of corporate social responsibility was barely mentioned.”
Now, he says, there is such a plethora of masters courses in the sector that it is becoming harder for entrants to gain work without a formal qualification.
And although the business is significantly smaller than his previous employer, Mr Bent says the scale of the company and the industry suits him.
As others have found, within smaller businesses there are opportunities to take on more responsibility: “Sustainability is still a young, immature field, which means you can move faster,” he says.
For mid-career executives with a strong portfolio in marketing, accounting or other professions, the area might still seem small. But, he says, there is reason to believe that it will continue to grow.
“Sustainability will become embedded in all functions and across companies and I imagine that in the future every department will have a sustainability team member,” Mr Bent adds.
The potential for professionals who decide they want to bring all of themselves to their work is blossoming.
By Elaine Moore | | More Details | | | | | | Imagining a future in which water is the new oil | | 2011-06-20 21:38:07 | In an essay in this magazine last September, J. B. MacKinnon argued that one of the obstacles we face in measuring environmental degradation is short-sightedness. We observe changes in the world around us through the lens of our own life experience — in years rather than millennia — and may thus miss the real dimensions of, say, the decline of freshwater fish stocks. As I was reminded on a recent trip to the Middle East, our understanding of human affairs is similarly compromised. Two thousand and eleven years have passed since the birth of Christ (eighty generations, more or less), and the Egyptians had developed a written language 2,500 years before that. Living in the present and preoccupied with its imperatives, we are inclined to forget that mankind has been struggling with the same problems — poverty, disease, ignorance, corruption, and tyranny — for eons, and that our time on earth is only a single page in a very large book. Measuring human progress (or the lack thereof) requires knowledge of the book as a whole, not just the part we witness with our own eyes.
Most of us know little of the Nabateans, an ancient tribe that inhabited the city of Petra in what is now Jordan around the time Christianity was taking hold. On the other side of the Red Sea, Egypt was passing from the Greeks to the Romans, whose legions established an empire stretching from northern Europe to Ethiopia. No match for the Romans on the field of battle, the Nabateans engaged them instead in the marketplace. Petra was a natural fortress, surrounded on three sides by sandstone mountains, and accessible only through a long, narrow gorge. It was also a commercial crossroads, linking Greece and Rome with Africa, the Far East, India, and China by camel train. Buying and selling spices, incense, gold, exotic animals, iron, copper, sugar, medicine, ivory, perfume, and textiles made the Nabateans wealthy, and 2,000 years later tourists like me still wonder at the grand Greco-style tombs they carved into Petra’s rose-coloured cliffs.
Ultimately, the Romans prevailed, seizing control of the Nabatean trade routes, but by that time the tribe had prospered for four hundred years — a pretty good run. As I admired the ruins of their civilization, my thoughts turned to Canada, not yet 150 years old and still finding its way in a world dominated, not only by the United States (the world’s present-day Romans), but by the emerging economic behemoths of India and China, as well. It could be said of us that, like the Nabateans, we were simply at the right place at the right time, a nation of immigrants who claimed a piece of the New World that was rich in resources — forest products, minerals, grains, coal, and oil — at a time when the appetite for these commodities was unprecedented. The Nabateans built their prosperity on the backs of camels; we found ours on and under the ground. They were traders; we have been, for the most part, harvesters and extractors — and are likely to remain so because of a resource we take for granted.
The Nabateans were skilled engineers who built dams, canals, and reservoirs to irrigate their land, but today the storied Jordan River is drying up, exacerbating tensions in the region. Population growth, increased per capita consumption, and climate change have conspired to create shortages of fresh water, not just in the Middle East, but throughout the world. The World Bank has reported that eighty countries now face water deficits that threaten their health and economies. In a new book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, Mark Hertsgaard predicts that in twenty years three billion people will live in water stressed countries. Canada will not be among them. On the contrary, with 0.5 percent of the world’s population, we have approximately 9 percent of its renewable fresh water (that is, water replenished by precipitation on a short-term basis). Standing on the banks of the Jordan, it is possible to imagine a future in which water is the new oil, and Canada — to stretch the metaphor — the new Saudi Arabia. The Nabateans would have known how to make the most of such an advantage. The question is, will we?
By John Macfarlane | | More Details | | | | | | WIND ENERGY BOOK WRITTEN BY IOWA LAKES ASSISTANT PROFESSOR | | 2011-05-14 19:48:18 | He has a title before his name and degrees from Teheran and the United Kingdom. His students at Iowa Lakes know him as (and call him by) his first name, Ahmad.
Iowa Lakes Community College assistant professor of the Wind Energy & Turbine Technology program, Dr. Ahmad Hemami has had thoughts of writing a book on wind energy.
When Cengage Learning, Inc., contacted him, it provided the perfect opportunity to write a book.
Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide.
“The lack of a comprehensive book about wind energy and wind turbines was the motivating factor in writing this book,” according to Ahmad.
The final product of Hemami’s work was released on January 10, 2011.
“Wind Turbine Technology,” First Edition, (ISBN: 978-1-4354-8646-1), “is a comprehensive and well illustrated text on the theory and operations of wind turbines that generate electricity for power companies,” according to the Cengage Learning Web site.
The publication took approximately two years to complete from the time Hemami was contacted by the publishing company.
“The process of getting a number of pictures from various organizations and companies together with obtaining their permission was the most difficult and time consuming part,” he said.
Originally from Iran, Dr. Hemami has lived in Canada for 28 years.
Although he teaches at Iowa Lakes Community College, he still lives in Canada each summer but stays in Estherville each semester during the college year.
Dr. Hemami, a husband and father of two children, plans to write another book in the near future.
The next book that he authors will be a more advanced book on wind turbine engineering.
Anyone wishing to learn more about the Iowa Lakes Wind Energy & Turbine Technology Program may the Iowa Lakes admissions office at (712) 362-7945 or 1-866-IA-LAKES.
Dr. Ahmad Hemami, Iowa Lakes Community College Wind Energy & Turbine Technology program Assistant Professor and author of the book “Wind Turbine Technology.”
SOURCE: Iowa Lakes Community College | | More Details | | | | | | An Urban Sustainable Supper | | 2011-05-14 19:39:14 | To coincide with both Earth Day and the kick off of AULA’s next residency for the Master of Arts Urban Sustainability Program, AULA’s earth-friendly graduate program is hosting a Sustainable Supper. AULA friends and faculty will gather on Tuesday, April 26 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Culver City campus, 400 Corporate Pointe, for a delicious vegan meal prepared by the Seasonal, Organic, Local (SOL) Catering Cooperative and which will include local produce grown by the South Central Farmers. The supper is free and open to the public.
The focus of the Sustainable Supper will be backyard gardens and the challenges facing urban farmers, and will highlight the work of the Ujima Farming Project. Ujima, from the Swahili meaning “cooperative work experience,” intends to promote community-run economic development with farming projects that grow local, organic, fresh foods for the LA Black community. The project will employ African Americans and attempt to create an economically viable business that could pay a living wage, while growing healthy foods for Black consumers. Speaking at the event will be Dr. Edna Bonacich, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside and Assistant to the Director for the Ujima Farming Project, and Ali Bhai, Program Manager for Root Down LA and Director of Programs for the Ujima Farming Project. AULA students from the MAOM will also speak and will present ways to make an impact in the community with gardening.
So come out and contribute your own special “act of green” in honor of Earth Day 2011 and simultaneously enjoy an ecologically-minded meal hosted by AULA’s very own ecologically-minded educational program.
SOURCE: Antioch LA | | More Details | | | | | | Duwamish Alive! | | 2011-05-14 19:34:02 | On April 16, 2011, Dr. Mike Marsolek, David Julian, Jim Smith, Chris Kemly, and Nicole Nakaoka spent their morning volunteering at Alki Seacrest Park as a part of the Duwamish Alive! river restoration event. Dr. Marsolek and the SU crew were hard at work r emoving invasive plants at the West Seattle Wildlife Habitat Garden, located just West of Salty’s Restaurant by Alki Beach.
Upon removing the weeds and invasive groundcover, mulch was added to prevent soil from eroding into the water. The goal of West Seattle Wildlife Habitat Garden is to educate the community as an example of native habitat. Duwamish Alive! is a volunteer event for Earth Day hosted by the Duwamish Alive Coalition, which is a partnership of non-profit organizations, government agencies, community groups and local businesses. While the coalition works on restoration projects year round, Duwamish Alive! is the only event where hundreds of volunteers come together on the same day at multiple sites around the Duwamish watershed to make a huge impact. This year was a success, with over 1050 people participating in cleanup efforts!
SOURCE: CEE News | | More Details | | | | | | Editorial: Kudos to OCC for its ecofriendly efforts | | 2011-05-14 19:14:01 | Whether you want to believe the world is getting warmer or colder, taking care of the environment and conserving natural resources should always be a top priority for Americans.
If nothing else, the recession should have taught us to be prudent. Don’t be wasteful and utilize both your financial and natural resources wisely.
That said, we give kudos to Oakland Community College and its sustainability committee for prompting the search of ecofriendly products to offer students. We’ve complimented OCC in the past on its academic prowess and contributions to the community. Now, we’re seeing the college make a difference in the area of environment.
By simply asking its food service vendor for more sustainable choices, the college will now become the first and only place in Michigan to offer a revolutionary new type of bottled water.
Instead of a plastic bottle containing petroleum and other chemicals, OCC is now offering Green Planet water in bottles that are made entirely from plant products and will compost within 80 days if they wind up in a landfill. At $1.50 per bottle, the eco-friendly option is only slightly more expensive than mainstream options. And, for you purists, it does appear to be quality water.
Municipal sources are used and then the water is steam cleaned until it’s completely pure. Healthy minerals are added back in and offer, as officials note, a product that is clean, pure and contaminant-free.
Unfortunately, Green Planet — a Chicago-based business formed and focused solely on the creation of a better water bottle — is finding it tough to compete against the large, multinational companies.
“It’s tough to break through. The gatekeepers are very strong,” said Bradford Schulman, CEO and founder of Green Planet. “Absent of a $10 million marketing campaign, how are we going to tell everyone?”
Schulman, who comes from the beverage industry, is asking people who want the option to buy Green Planet to find the company on Facebook and pressure local retailers to carry the product.
Meanwhile, Continental Services — the Sterling Heights-based food service vendor that discovered Green Planet for OCC — said the company will do its part by offering the product to the rest of its customers.
“Hopefully, by partnering with OCC and Green Planet, we can start a trend that will become contagious,” said Steve LaPorte, vice president of Continental Services.
We hope so too, and with most of Continental Services’ business being based locally in Southeast Michigan, it would be at least a nice alternative to the other bottled waters.
It’s a free country and the free market system still rules. So, obviously, there are many people who would prefer to buy a little cheaper product and let someone else worry about the disposal consequences. But if you’re concerned about the environment and future generations, then there are other options and products that will help you follow your conscience.
OCC is providing one of those alternatives to its students. If possible, other schools, governments and public institutions should follow the college’s lead. Helping make Oakland County a little bit greener doesn’t have to be a political statement.
SOURCE: theoaklandpress.com
| | More Details | | | | | | Finding Talent for Today’s Green Jobs | | 2011-04-28 10:06:07 | Given companies’ continued interest in implementing sustainable practices, the opportunities for “green” jobs are greater than ever before. And though some may think these jobs require a new skillset, at their core they appeal to those with excellent math and science skills, specifically engineers. To be clear, environmental engineers certainly have specialized training, but many of today’s “green” positions are really just retooling of traditional engineering jobs, whether it’s an electrical engineer redesigning a smart grid or a mechanical engineer working on fuel-cell technology.
Some of the more popular “green” jobs today are:
Solar Power Contractor: More and more people are turning to solar to power their homes and businesses. States such as New Jersey and Florida offer rebates or incentives around choosing solar energy, which makes it a smart choice for the environment and the checkbook—and also for a career.
Wind Turbine Installer: The Pacific Northwest and California are home to many wind turbine farms that account for an increasing portion of power generation, and there will continue to be a demand for all professionals with this relevant experience. Because the career and technology is still relatively new, the opportunity for growth and advancement in this field is strong.
LEED Certified Engineer: Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Certification is an internationally recognized method of implementing and constructing green buildings, homes, and spaces. Engineers with this certification can work in a traditional engineering setting, but the LEED distinction will become more valuable as awareness around making buildings more environmentally friendly grows.
Hybrid Vehicle Technician: The past decade has seen the desire for Americans to own green cars increase and given the rising gas prices, more and more people will turn to hybrid vehicles. From testing lithion batteries for cars to the specialized assembly of the actual vehicles, there is no shortage of jobs in this area.
Environmental Protection Specialist: As the green movement grows larger, the demand for these professionals is expected to grow greatly. While many in this field work for the government, more and more businesses are bringing on specialists to work or consult on a variety of projects which may often include construction and development.
Indeed, nearly all of these jobs require some sort of engineering expertise. Ironically, however, while there is now an abundance of engineering-type jobs in this country, particularly as the country continues to be focused on sustainable efforts and “green” implementation, the talent pool is simply not as plentiful. Those who actually choose to study engineering in college – a decreasing amount – are not pursuing such positions once they graduate, many times gravitating instead to more trendy jobs in technology. or more lucrative ones in consulting and finance.
Yet, the current generation is just as concerned with doing good as they are with doing well for themselves in terms of earning a living; for those with the right skills, a job that combines engineering with a green focus could be the answer. But given the fact that the war for talent in this area is fierce, employers need to think about the most effective ways to reach and entice this valuable, highly-skilled talent. One way is to strike strategic partnerships with local universities to build a pipeline of future talent. Exposing engineering students to the different possibilities for their degree while they are just beginning their college career could help in convincing those students to actually stick with engineering once they graduate. If your company isn’t already doing so, consider developing an internship program that combines real-life experience with education and development and even professional mentorship from the company’s senior leadership.
In addition, a number of environmental jobs are concentrated in certain parts of the country, such as the Northwest (for solar and wind energy) and the Midwest (for automotive and other green industrial engineering projects). Yet, talent for these types of jobs can come from anywhere. Offering a generous relocation and incentive package is a way to lure the best talent from around the country. And the incentives don’t just have to be financially based. For example, offer prospective employees the chance to volunteer one day a week with their favorite environmental nonprofit, so they can further combine their personal interests with work.
Finally, work/life balance is always a serious consideration for employees—and those in the green sector are no different. It often can be a deciding factor in choosing one job over the other. If your company offers flexible working arrangements, for example, make sure to highlight that as a perk.
The ongoing rise of green jobs will continue to fuel an already high strong demand for highly skilled talent. Finding ways to build and cultivate relationships with those who have the right background —especially engineers—is the key for companies to remain competitive in this growing sector.
By Diana Fitting | | More Details | | | | | | College students are in a position to go green | | 2011-04-12 11:14:21 | Fighting climate change as a college student can mean anything from tracking down the lone recycling bin in your dorm to buying a Prius to simply signing whatever environmental petition happens to be circling campus that day.
Of course, some students take it a step further.
This weekend, college students from across the nation will congregate in Washington, D.C. for the Energy Action Coalition’s annual Power Shift Conference. Here, students will learn about green jobs, clean energy and the most efficient ways of implementing clean energy resources on college campuses.
Hye You | Daily Trojan
The conference, which focuses specifically on fighting climate change, will draw some 10,000 students — including at least one from USC.
Tony Guan, a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and law and an intern for USC’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said he signed up for the D.C. trip because he feels he will learn the leadership skills necessary to help expand the movement against climate change at USC.
Guan and his fellow climate-conscious students will participate in what the Power Shift website describes as a four-day clean-energy “boot camp.” The group will listen to such renowned speakers as Al Gore and will wrap up the trip to D.C. with a massive rally at the capitol building.
“It’s an incredible way to network with other students and see what we can each be doing at our own campuses,” Guan said. “Not enough is being done [to fight climate change] at USC right now, so things like this help raise awareness and student participation.”
He makes a valid point. The Beyond Coal Campaign, for example, has convinced 16 universities across the country — from Case Western Reserve University to Cornell University, and most recently Miami University of Ohio — to go coal-free.
But according to Henry Symons, USC’s Beyond Coal Organizer for the Sierra Club, the university is still not coal-free and currently has no plan or timeline to become so.
This is where student participation comes in.
“The most effective method for students is to actually work locally in the area where they have the most political power,” Symons said. “That means on university campuses … Students have a tremendous amount of power there.”
This year alone, USC’s chapter of the campaign has collected 2,500 signatures on a petition for the campus to go coal-free. Symons believes if this continues, it will not only make the issue increasingly difficult for the USC administration to ignore, but will also educate people and emphasize the role college students can play in clean-energy reform.
The bottom line is college students are among those with the most potential to influence energy policy, whether on campus or on the national level.
Conferences like Power Shift highlight the unique position the college student demographic holds in the push for energy reform.
Campuses use incredible amounts of energy and seem ideal for clean-energy innovation.
Most of all, universities facilitate the convergence of brainpower necessary to fuel a conference like Power Shift.
USC might not be the greenest university, but that only means organizations such as the Beyond Coal Campaign and the Sierra Club are looking for students with fresh ideas, and that conferences like Power Shift are ready to educate students looking to move our own campus forward.
Why not take advantage of that?
By Kastalia Medrano | | More Details | | | | | | Sustainability Leadership | | 2011-04-05 11:59:12 | This unique online professional certificate program leverages the combined strengths of Ithaca College's School of Business, Roy H. Park School of Communications, Department of Environmental Studies and Science, and our campus Sustainability Initiative which was awarded the 2008 Campus Leadership Award by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The Professional Certificate in Sustainability Leadership is designed for practitioners who want to improve their skills and knowledge of "best practices" in order to lead effective sustainability initiatives in their university, corporation, community, or municipality. The program covers core areas of sustainability practice and social entrepreneurship. Topics covered are immediately relevant to your career, providing concepts and skills necessary for you to:
* Engage stakeholders to make decisions and plan activities that advance your organization’s green initiatives
* Develop sustainability an organizational purpose
* Design marketing and communication strategies that effectively communicate sustainability as your organization's purpose and practice
* Establish the economic and social `return` on investment (ROI) of sustainability initiatives to motivate your organization to expand its efforts
* Integrate sustainability into your business operations
Each online seminar provides practical tools and advice, as well as giving you the theoretical underpinning and professional language needed to more effectively explain and defend your strategic decisions.
Seminars are facilitated by sustainability experts, providing you with access to leaders in the field. Each seminar is a three-week experience requiring about 12-15 hours of work, including readings and participation in online discussions. The online “anytime” format gives you the flexibility to fit seminars into your busy schedule.
Program Support
Partial support for the development of this program was provided by a grant from the HSBC in the Community Foundation.
SOURCE:ITHACA.edu | | More Details | | | | | | Summer Institute in Sustainability Leadership | | 2011-04-05 11:57:17 | ABOUT THE INSTITUTE
The Summer Institute in Sustainability Leadership is an intensive one-week professional development program designed for those taking a leadership role in developing policy, creating plans and implementing sustainability projects in businesses, colleges, universities, and across all levels of government.
This award-winning program provides you the opportunity to engage in creative thinking about your role as a sustainability leader and the actions your organization can take to move the sustainability agenda forward.
The Summer Institute in Sustainability Leadership offers a wide variety of perspectives and practical tools needed to integrate sustainability as a core value in your organization. Participants learn to develop strategies, plans and procedures that are mindful of public policy, stakeholder interest, and the triple-bottom-line.
Institute Highlights include:
• Inspiring and leading-edge speakers from academia, government and industry
• Interactive format with opportunities for networking, extended Q&A sessions, and open space sessions that allow participants to address their own issues and ideas
• Applied case studies and guided field excursions showcasing real-life examples of sustainability initiatives
2010 Institute Highlights
In July 2010 the Summer Institute in Sustainability Leadership brought together a passionate group of participants from diverse backgrounds, job-types and experiences. Attendees came from across the continent and as far away as Columbia and Brazil.
The intensive Institute featured opportunities for knowledge exchange, resource sharing, field excursions, and over 20 interactive speaker and panel sessions. Many thanks to our engaging speakers who helped make the 2010 Institute a terrific success.
Delegate feedback was overwhelmingly positive – read what our participants had to say.
SOURCE: UBC Continuing Studies | | More Details | | | | | | Yale Dining Services Raises the Bar with Sustainably-Sourced Products | | 2011-04-05 11:54:38 | Whether navigating the tricky issue of chicken tenders in its everyday operations, or finding sustainably-sourced crab for high-profile events, Yale University Dining has raised the bar for sustainable university food service. Most recently, Yale Dining, with the Yale College Council, organized the third annual “Final Cut” cooking competition between teams from each residential college, based on the Iron Chef program and incorporating as the theme ingredient wild-caught Alaskan King crab. Crab was chosen as a sustainable alternative to other meat options since US crab fisheries are more rigorously monitored than many other fishing industries (such as overfished East Coast salmon and cod fisheries), to ensure that fishers do not exceed the total allowable catch as calculated by fisheries scientists and ensure long-term sustainability. Furthermore, the methods for catching crab have less impact on the natural environment, since crab pots and traps result in no bycatch.
The students participating in the competition embraced the ingredient wholeheartedly, creating dishes such as crab gumbo, crab and chili spring rolls, and crab foam. Judged by a panel including Director of Yale Dining Rafi Taherian and Yale College Dean Mary Miller, the winning dish (crab zeppole with spicy lemon whip, and pancetta sage crab risotto) will be incorporated into the Yale dining menu. This event proved both an excellent way for Yale Dining to communicate about sustainability to the student community, and a fun way for students to get involved.
Yale menus have already seen major amendments in the past few years, as Yale Dining has set its sights on greater operational efficiency and sustainable procurement. By consolidating central office positions, orders, and deliveries, Dining was able to save large amounts of money that it funneled back into purchasing higher quality, lower-impact products. Currently, about 60% of all produce is purchased, in season, from local farms that are either organic, or use Integrated Pest Management, and has played an integral role in the major reconfiguration of the dining hall salad bar and an increase in produce consumption of 60%.
ase in produce consumption of 60%.
Meat products have slowly been edged out of their traditional prime real estate on the servery line by expanded options for vegetable protein, which has increased by more than 20% over the last year. The meat that has remained has been carefully vetted for sustainability: all chicken is vegetarian fed, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and sourced locally, as is beef and most pork. The traditional cult following of heavily-processed chicken nuggets, from inhumanely-raised meat, have found a new object of devotion in the in-house chicken tenders, which are prepared fresh by Yale Dining and incorporate only sustainably-raised meat—now the standard for Dining Services even as it serves tens of thousands of meals a day.
By Yale Office of Sustainability | | More Details | | | | | | NYC Announces Program to Help Cleantech Entrepreneurs and Accelerate Green Technology Use in Buildings | | 2011-03-31 10:02:45 | New York City announced an innovative program, whose primary purpose is to create green jobs, but will also give cleantech entrepreneurs a chance to test drive their new products in city buildings. A third benefit is that the technologies improve the energy efficiency of buildings.
Cleantech start-ups will be able to offer their products - which increase energy efficiency in buildings - for trial runs to landlords.
The program is part of the Municipal Entrepreneurial Testing System (M.E.T.S.) that launched in January. Its goal is to increase green jobs in NYC by connecting clean technologies with landlords that are willing to test their products in their buildings.
It can be very expensive for start-ups to test products, but it's a necessary step for gaining investor finance and for launching products in the marketplace.
And landlords can "try before they buy" to make sure they work. If they decide to buy, they'll get a discount for participating in the program.
The program plans to release its first requests for proposals from cleantech start-ups in the next month. It's still undecided whether only local start-ups will be able to participate.
In January, the Bloomberg administration launched the NYC Urban Technology Innovation Center to support jobs growth and to promote development and commercialization of green building technologies in New York City. The Center is a partnership of the NYC Economic Development Corporation, Columbia University, Polytechnic Institute of NY University, and the City University of New York (CUNY).
It connects academic institutions conducting underlying research, companies creating associated products, and building owners who will use those technologies. In addition to connecting green building technology companies that need real-world test sites to building owners, it will maintain a database of current green building technology needs and research, and will host a series of community building forums.
"We will never meet the ambitious carbon reduction goals in PlaNYC unless we reduce the emissions from New York's one million existing buildings," said Mayor Bloomberg.
Providing companies a place to test their innovations will help them improve their products and collect data on their performance - keys to marketing their products. A resulting information and data clearinghouse will track building technology costs, benefits, and lessons learned from deployments underway throughout the City. And it will host stakeholder discussions with private sector and academic institutions on green building entrepreneurship, financing and City-specific challenges.
"New York City's building and energy codes, enacted by the City Council as the Greater, Greener Buildings plan in 2009, will require more energy efficiency and save money for property owners, but public policy needs to work hand-in-hand with private initiative if we're all going to achieve the maximum benefits," said David Bragdon, Director of the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.
Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science through its Center for Technology, Innovation, and Community Engagement will manage and operate the NYC Urban Technology Innovation Center. The New York City Economic Development Corporation will provide $250,000 to help establish it, and Columbia, NYU-Poly and CUNY will provide upwards of $500,000 worth of resources, including staff to develop the program, build the database and conduct corporate outreach. The Center will develop a sponsorship and membership structure whereby technology companies and building owners can join at various levels ranging from $1,000-$50,000 a year. A variety of potential members, including building owners, technology companies, and other stakeholders such as utilities, financial institutions, contractors, design firms, and nonprofit organizations, have already expressed an interest in joining. The Center will seek additional sponsors to support the expansion of its activities.
IBM will collaborate by applying advanced computing technology - such as cloud computing, real-time analytics, and supercomputing - to help NYC become a global leader in deploying smart building technologies. "This approach will help building owners in the city increase the attractiveness, efficiency and sustainability of their real estate through significant improvements in how they use energy, water and other resources," said Dr. Katherine Frase, Vice President, IBM Research.
The NYC Urban Technology Innovation Center builds on the Bloomberg Administration's efforts to strengthen NYC's economy, while supporting and attracting green businesses. The initiatives are a culmination of more than two years of analysis and hundreds of interviews with experts from across the industry to determine the scope of the City's green sector. In the effort to double the number of green jobs in NYC, the initiatives focus on four target areas that will account for 70% of green jobs in NYC over the next decade: green buildings, on-site renewable energy, environmental finance, and greener neighborhoods.
SOURCE:SustainableBusiness.com | | More Details | | | | | | Earthweek 2011, C2C | | 2011-03-25 18:34:29 | During Earthweek 2011, C2C will host over a hundred video-dialogues between Campuses and Congress on climate-related issues. If you want to invite your congressperson or senator to talk with your campus, we will -virtually- move heaven and earth to get him or her engaged.
 
Once scheduled, next April, you gather students or colleagues, for some serious, web-enabled conversation about climate change solutions, EPA action, incentives for clean energy, and the potential for green jobs.
If you want to help us lead the way, and invite your member of Congress of senator to skype, send us an e-mail at climate@bard.edu.
SOURCE: Bard College | | More Details | | | | | | Goodstein on Green Jobs | | 2011-03-25 18:31:06 | In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Eban Goodstein of Bard College explains the role green technology could play in the economic recovery.
Dr. Goodstein is the director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College. He holds a BA in geology from Williams College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. Goodstein has coordinated climate education events at over 2,500 colleges, universities, high schools and other institutions across the country. In 2010 he published the college-level text book Economics and the Environment.
SOURCE: Bard College | | More Details | | | | | | Goodstein on Green Jobs | | 2011-03-25 18:31:02 | In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Eban Goodstein of Bard College explains the role green technology could play in the economic recovery.
Dr. Goodstein is the director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College. He holds a BA in geology from Williams College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. Goodstein has coordinated climate education events at over 2,500 colleges, universities, high schools and other institutions across the country. In 2010 he published the college-level text book Economics and the Environment.
SOURCE: Bard College | | More Details | | | | | | Clean technological advancements | | 2011-03-09 10:59:05 | Canada has emerged-through the work of entrepreneurial companies and industry-as a leader in innovative technologies that marry environment alstewardship with economic prosperity.
Clean technologies provide better environmental and economic performance,making economies more competitive,creating new market opportunities, driving productivity growth (Canada's central economic challenge), and protecting existing jobs while creating new jobs for skilled workers. These innovations are revolutionizing the industries at the heart of the Canadian economy, notably oil and gas,mining,forestry and agriculture.
Clean technologies are also having a direct impact on the lives of Canadians. Applications like smart grid and energyuse monitoring are reducing our hydro bills. Applications that manage indivi-dual lighting needs or provide natural light inside a building are creating a better workspace. Alternative transportation technologies have the potential to reduce our gas bills while, at an industrial-level, reducing customer costs for food and retail items in the longer term.
British Columbia is playing a leadership role in bringing these innovations to commercial reality. Looking at SDTC's portfolio alone,there are over 40 BC-based companies commercializing innovative technologies across all ma-jor sectors of the economy.
In the building sector, this means technologies like gasification systems that enable customers to self-generate clean, low cost heat and power using waste fuels. It also means solutions like an intelligent energy management platform that provides building owners and occupants with accurate and user friendly building energy and resource consumption information,significantly cutting energy bills.
BC-based companies have also come up with solutions to reduce the environmental impacts of the transportation sector,for example by developing technologies that allow engines to operate on clean-burning gaseous fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Finally,in the forestry sector,they have discovered ways to produce high-value added chemicals, such as lignin and glycols, from wood waste, thereby creating new revenue streams from waste and hence moving this mainly commodity-oriented industry up the value chain.
The development,adoption and diffusion of clean technologies throughout our economy is happening in real time, because firms and governments increasingly recognize this as essential to both environmental and economic performance. Canada, and British Columbia,are well-positioned for long term success in this cleantech revolution.
SOURCE: vancouversun.com
| | More Details | | | | | | Emerging Sectors Education Consortium joins Green Collar Association | | 2011-03-04 17:20:59 | The Emerging Sectors Education Consortium comprised of 10 colleges has joined the Green Collar Association.
Out of the 10 member schools and institutions, the pilot membership includes Oakland Community College, Schoolcraft Community College, Baker College, Oakland University, Walsh College and St. Clair Community College.
The Consortium received a two-year grant from the US, Department of Labor and has goals to ensure collaboration and alignment of strategies to connect students with training and jobs. Their efforts have also included curriculum development, a portable lab for experiential learning for high school students, providing sub-grants to its participants along with soft skill programming for a pilot group of participants. The group will be part of a very large community event in May.
The consortium based it's planning on a document created by Oakland County, Skills Needs Assessment Report (SNAP), that listed the needs of business and industry for soft and technical skills in the workplace. The group feels that involvement in the Green Collar Association will provide students and staff of the institutions relevant data, stats and information to impact and align with the strategic direction of the consortium. The consortium's fiscal and coordinating agency is Oakland Community College. A website is being developed and will provide data for the community.
For more information about the Emerging Sectors Education Consortium, contact Consortium manager Deborah Taylor at 248-232-4571 or djtaylor@oaklandcc.edu | | More Details | | | | | | UCLA Extension's Global Sustainabililty Open House | | 2011-03-04 12:31:22 | Come and discover why we are the top choice in continuing education in sustainability for L.A. professionals.
Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011
Time: 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Westwood: Extension Lindbrook Center - 10920 Lindbrook Dr. Los Angeles, CA 90024
Find out how the Certificate in Global Sustainability can provide the training you need to become a leader in the green movement that is reshaping the way we live and do business.
• Attend a panel from 6:00 PM - 6:45 PM to hear from certificate instructors and students
• Meet with an advisor and plan your spring schedule
• Get 10% off one spring sustainability course
To attend this event, please R.S.V.P. by Monday, March 21 to Sp11.openhouse@uclaextension.edu
| | More Details | | | | | | Talking Energy with America's Greenest Coal Exec | | 2011-03-03 11:00:48 | Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, a utility company based in Charlotte, N.C., is a wild card in the electricity sector. His company supplies 35,000 megawatts of power to consumers in the Southeast and Midwest, most of it through coal or nuclear, making him one of the biggest carbon emitters in the country. Yet it was Rogers who emerged as a key corporate player in the attempt to build a grand alliance for a carbon-cap-and-trade bill between 2008 and 2010. In The Climate War, his book on the legislative battle, the journalist (and former TIME editor) Eric Pooley ably described Rogers not only as a "silver-tongued devil" who could "talk the down off a duckling," but also as the only man who could have gotten corporate America on board for a climate bill.
 That effort finally failed in 2010, when the climate bill died in the Senate, and with global-warming-denying Republicans in firm control of the House, there's little to zero chance of cap and trade being revived in the near term. Certainly Rogers, long its champion, doesn't think so. "There's a vacuum of public policy now," Rogers told me in an interview in New York City on Monday. "There's a lot of uncertainty in regards to environmental regulation, period." Ending that uncertainty is why Rogers — unusual for a coal-heavy utility chief — was in favor of cap and trade in the first place. He sees his industry going through a fundamental transformation as it moves from the 20th century to the 21st century, both for climate reasons and because of concerns over traditional air pollution. "In the 20th century, the goal was universal access to electricity," he says. "In the 21st century it will be about modernization, and by 2050 all our existing plants but hydro" may be closed down or changed because of environmental regulations.
The question for Rogers and other utility executives is exactly what those environmental regulations will look like. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to issue regulations on greenhouse gases for power plants, but Republicans and some Democrats are looking to strip the agency of that power. Yet even if greenhouse-gas regulations are blocked — and they're not likely to be onerous should they go through — gradual tightening by the EPA of existing rules on pollutants like sulfur and nitrous oxide will force tough choices on utilities. "There's over 300,000 megawatts of electricity in existing coal plants, about 50% of what the U.S. produces," says Rogers. "Up to one-third of them are over 40 years old, and depending on how the regulations play out, anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 megawatts could be shut down." (See the top 20 green tech ideas.)
The question, in the absence of cap and trade, is what kind of power is going to take the place of those old coal plants. And here is where Rogers is notably changing his tune, talking up research and development over regulation and limits. "Just a sliver of our national budget goes to research," he says. "If we can't get a consensus on carbon policy, let's put the money into research and let's drive down the cost of solar and wind and make them competitive. Think about how much it would change the debate if solar and wind were as cheap as coal?"
Rogers is echoing a line that's coming from the White House itself, along with a number of energy researchers and writers. If you can't get the politics together for a hard carbon cap — and given the makeup of the U.S. Senate, with the disproportionate power of some coal states, that might never happen — the next best thing is to ramp up our spending on government energy R&D. It wouldn't take much to make a big difference — we spend just a few billion dollars a year on energy research, compared with more than $30 billion a year on health research and $80 billion on defense research. "We still have an opportunity to lead the world in clean energy and capture the jobs of the 21st century," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday at the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (APRA-E) summit in Maryland. "It is a race, and the train is leaving the station."
An energy-research-focused program should be more bipartisan than cap and trade — after all, we spend far more money on other areas of research, and in the past major scientific projects have been seen as national, not political, goals. But there's no guarantee that will be the case in a more polarized and austere age — at the summit Tuesday, Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said she doubted that APRA-E, the White House's crown jewel for energy research, would get the increased funding the President has requested. "Every program must live within its means," she said. "At what level Congress will support funding for APRA-E is unclear."
If powerful business voices like Rogers can get behind beefed-up support for energy R&D, that strategy might succeed where cap and trade failed. Rogers, for one, is about to get a lot more powerful — Duke Energy is set to merge with Progress Energy to form the biggest utility in the country. The silver-tongued devil couldn't get the deal done on cap and trade. With time running out to do something on energy and climate, we'll have to hope he can do better this time.
SOURCE: time.com
| | More Details | | | | | | The Carbon Bubble | | 2011-02-28 22:18:15 | The dot com bubble. The housing bubble. Markets are prone to an endless succession of irrational exuberance that allows commodities to dramatically overshoot their intrinsic value. Greed and avarice blind the masses to the overvaluation until rationality unpredictably takes hold and the bubble collapses. There are always people who recognize a bubble when they see one; the problem is predicting just when it will pop and catastrophically collapse.
Today a number of experts have recognized that we are living in the midst of a century-plus-long period of irrational exuberance I like to call it the Carbon Bubble.
 The carbon bubble, quite simply, is the constantly increasing consumption of fossil fuels that began with coal in the 19th century and then continued with oil and gas in the 20th. I call it the master bubble because it drives the growth of every economic indicator, from gross domestic product, to automobile production to corn harvests. In fact the incredible human population boom is largely an artifact of the carbon bubble. Seven billion people are fed only because we turn oil into food. For some agricultural products it takes ten calories of oil to produce one calorie of food. The truth is people are made of oil.
Most people don’t think of economic and population growth as a bubble. That’s because it has continued continuously since the rise of market economies with only minor setbacks. But modern industrial growth has been turbo-charged by fossil fuels. The carbon bubble’s life span is greater than the life span of any human, so for people living today it seems like an inevitability. But it may not be. The deflation of the carbon bubble is a real possibility.
Economic growth is predicated on the expectation that oil supplies will remain reliable and cheap. But the recent history of oil supply and demand gives a hint to what even a partial deflation of the carbon bubble can bring. Spiking oil prices have repeatedly caused economies to stumble, putting a ceiling on economic growth. It’s been called the “undulating plateau” and works like this: As oil supplies get tight, prices rise, which in turn crimps economic growth. The combination of oil dependence and production constraints set up a self-sabotaging boom and bust cycle.
As economists point out, price spikes encourage entrepreneurs and innovators. In the past they have spurred exploration and the discovery of new cheap oil sources. It might happen again, but new oil sources are found in increasingly costly places like deep water and perhaps the ecologically fragile Arctic. Technological improvements like energy efficiency and the demise of the Hummer have also made us less vulnerable to oil price swings. But there are limits.
A bubble is sustained by expectations and ultimately collapses when the masses lose faith. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict the exact moment at which this happens. I am especially bad at it. When my wife and I moved to Spain in 2001, I thought the country was in a real estate bubble. It was, but it took about a decade to pop. Right now it’s easy to see a carbon bubble, but is it half empty or half full?
Oil is the lubricant of capitalism, but if the masses lose faith in reliable oil supplies you will begin to hear the hissing sound. The scenes of popular revolution in the Middle East are inspirational but they are spooking oil markets. The loss of Libyan production due to unrest has not been catastrophic, but Libya is a bit player. As one analyst put it, “If what happened in Libya happens in Saudi Arabia, it’s the end of western civilization.” This is the disturbing point. Are the rise of modern western civilization and the carbon bubble synonymous? If not, then let’s stop acting like it.
SOURCE: forbes.com
| | More Details | | | | | | Pioneering UBC clean energy project gets $11.2 million in new government support | | 2011-02-27 10:29:17 | A first-of-its-kind clean energy project that will generate enough clean electricity to power 1,500 homes and reduce the University of British Columbia’s natural gas consumption by up to 12 per cent, received $11.2 million in new federal and provincial government funding at an official groundbreaking ceremony today.
The $27-million UBC Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Project (BRDP) is a partnership with Vancouver-based Nexterra Systems Corp. and General Electric Co. (GE). When it opens in 2012, it will be the first biomass-fueled, heat-and-power generation system of its kind in the world.
The project will eliminate up to 4,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year from UBC’s Vancouver campus – the equivalent of taking 1,100 cars off the road – and is part of UBC’s bold plan to reduce institutional GHG emissions from 2007 levels by 33 per cent by 2015, 67 per cent by 2020 and total GHG emissions by 2050.
Using Nexterra’s gasification technology and a GE Jenbacher engine, BRDP will produce two megawatts of electricity – up to six per cent of the campus’s average electrical demand – and the heat produced will provide up to 25 per cent of the campus’s steam requirements. The project will be powered by biomass, including tree trimmings, wood chips and other urban wood waste diverted from local landfills.
“Investing in clean energy technologies stimulates the growth of a domestic clean energy industry, creating high-quality jobs for Canadians,” said the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, who announced $10.2 million in federal support. “Moving forward aggressively with investments in clean energy technologies will help us balance our need for energy with our need to protect the environment.”
“This is an incredible example of partnership that helps establish British Columbia as a leader in the development of creative energy solutions,” said the Honourable John Yap, B.C. Minister of State for Climate Action, who announced $1 million dollars in new support, adding to the $4.5 million B.C. allocated for the project last year. “The UBC project shows we can build momentum in the clean energy sector and create new economic activity while reducing the carbon footprint left by our public buildings.”
The facility, in addition to supplying clean energy for the campus, will advance clean energy research and development. Researchers will conduct applied research on bioenergy systems, other green technologies and best practices and policies.
“This project is an example of UBC’s concept of the university as a living laboratory for research, action and leadership on global sustainability issues,” said UBC President Stephen Toope. “With this crucial support from government, UBC will generate clean steam and electricity, provide valuable new knowledge for the clean energy sector and inform new global standards for bioenergy system performance.”
The four-storey, 1,886-square-metre facility will be the first North American commercial application of cross-laminated-timber (CLT), a European building system adapted for BC lumber and manufacturing facilities. CLT is a renewable, low-carbon replacement for steel or concrete in multi-storey residential and commercial buildings up to, and potentially higher than, 10 stories.
UBC has signed a memorandum of understanding with the City of Vancouver, which will provide approximately 5,000 tonnes per year of tree chips from its municipal operations. Other potential fuel sources include fibre from beetle-killed pine and clean wood waste from B.C. sawmills.
UBC research collaborators for the project include the Clean Energy Research Centre (CERC), the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, the Faculty of Applied Science and the Sauder School of Business. Once the project is fully demonstrated at UBC, Nexterra and GE will replicate the technology throughout Canada and globally.
“This innovative approach allows the accelerated development, demonstration and commercialization of clean-energy technology for domestic use and global export,” says Professor David Wilkinson, CERC Director. “The UBC campus provides an ideal analytical model for research and learning and will give municipalities the data required to help plan and install future bioenergy operations.”
The project is a key part of UBC’s transformation into a living laboratory for sustainability research and action. Regularly ranked among the greenest universities, UBC’s major sustainability initiatives include aggressive carbon reduction targets; CIRS, which will be North America’s greenest building and a hub for sustainability research when it opens this fall; UBC Renew, a more than $120-million cost-sharing partnership with the BC Government that modernizes historic buildings at UBC; a Continuous Optimization project that reduces energy use in core academic buildings; and the UBC Sustainability Initiative, which integrates sustainability teaching, learning, research and operations.
Funding support for BRDP comes from Natural Resources Canada, BC’s Innovative Clean Energy Fund, Western Economic Diversification Canada, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, BC Bioenergy Network, BC Ministry of Forests, FPInnovations, Canadian Wood Council, Nexterra System’s Corp., GE and UBC.
SOURCE: ubc.ca
| | More Details | | | | | | Re-energize the Economy | | 2011-02-27 10:15:54 | NEARLY every governor in America is wrestling with budget issues, making unenviable choices on which services, programs or salaries to reduce or eliminate, and deciding whether higher taxes and fees are viable. Most governors are hemmed in by state requirements that the budget be balanced without deficit spending. And I know how daunting — and all-consuming — the task can be. What I hope does not get lost in this effort is the governors’ responsibility to help develop a clean energy economy in America, one that will help create jobs, wean us off foreign oil and protect the environment.
Building this new economy starts with understanding how clean energy legislation can create jobs. During my four-year term in Colorado, I signed 57 pieces of clean energy legislation. In 2007, for example, we doubled the proportion of energy in the state that is required to come from renewable sources to 20 percent by 2020. In 2010, we increased that to 30 percent for our biggest utility. As a result, Colorado now ranks fourth among the 50 states in its number of clean energy workers per capita, and 1,500 clean energy companies call our state home — an 18 percent increase since 2004. Wind- and solar-energy companies that have built factories and opened offices in Colorado have brought in thousands of new jobs.
Governors should also be strong advocates for natural gas, the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, while still ensuring that drilling and production are environmentally sound. In Colorado, we tangled with the energy industry, insisting that tighter regulations were needed to protect air, water, wildlife and communities. But with new rules in place, we have proved that protection and production can coexist. Last year we capped our clean energy work with a bill that required shutting down several dirty, inefficient coal plants and replacing them with cleaner energy fuels, principally natural gas.
President Obama’s goal to produce 80 percent of America’s energy from clean sources by 2035 is absolutely achievable. But as Washington ponders its next move on energy legislation, governors can and should lead the way.
By Bill Ritter Jr.
| | More Details | | | | | | Coverage of Green Issues Becomes More Specialized | | 2011-02-21 10:50:24 | Five years ago, energy prices were climbing, President George W. Bush declared that the United States had to break its addiction to Middle Eastern oil, and “An Inconvenient Truth” — Al Gore’s movie about climate change — hit the theaters.
Journalists spotted a trend and responded with enthusiasm. Articles about the burgeoning “green” movement proliferated. Wineries were adding solar panels, the U.S. military in Iraq wanted wind turbines, and Harvard University was installing waterless urinals. HSBC was buying carbon offsets for executives’ flights.
This type of story is now nearing extinction. Journalists are a little less wide-eyed, and a little more picky. The cutting-edge coverage today does not typically revolve around the greening of fill-in-the-blank company. Instead, topics like “Who’s not going green?” and “What are the difficulties of going green?” are being seen more frequently.
This is a natural evolution. As sustainability coverage proliferated, companies figured out that grandly announcing their carbon-cutting credentials was an easy way to get high marks for image, whether or not they were making meaningful changes. In addition, investments in energy-saving equipment became financially sensible when energy prices soared a few years ago.
Going green, in other words, became so mainstream that it was no longer big news. Instead, the news media began to home in on who had not bought into the trend. (Candidates have included some U.S. politicians, purchasers of the now-defunct Hummer, and so forth.)
Journalists these days are examining more closely the challenges associated with the new environmental order. One issue is that green claims are often impossible to check.
Not quite half of the large companies that report their greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project, an investor-backed nonprofit organization, get their numbers verified by third parties, although the organization says that those companies that do use outside verification get rewarded in its standings.
In the health and beauty industry, terms like “made with organic ingredients” are common, but as The New York Times, of which the International Herald Tribune is the global edition, reported last year, no government agency in the United States monitors those terms for personal-care products, so manufacturers can sling them around at will. (Whole Foods, the retailing giant, is trying to crack down by instituting its own certification requirements.)
Another favorite story line these days examines companies whose environmental aspirations hopelessly contradict their core product. The classic case is BP, which once referred to itself in advertising as Beyond Petroleum, yet spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last year.
In a different example, a New York Times article last August reported how Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a Vermont-based coffee company, had been struggling with the disconnect between its eco-friendly reputation and the fact that the majority of its sales came from nonrecyclable, single-use coffee pods and their brewing systems.
Yet another angle that has gained traction in the past few years involves the challenges facing renewable energy. Five years ago, journalists were writing a lot about the proliferation of new technologies. Wind turbines were advancing across the North Sea and America’s Great Plains, and everybody seemed to be ramping up biodiesel production.
Nowadays — doubtless to the chagrin of the clean-energy industry — coverage tends to focus more on the challenges and quirks of these new technologies. How will the electric grid solve the problem of integrating large numbers of wind turbines, which don’t spin when the wind doesn’t blow? Will wind machines interfere with military radar? What happens if the blades get icy? And perhaps most importantly, how will the clean-energy industry, especially solar, bring its costs down far enough to become competitive with fossil fuels?
Companies taking measures to go green still can make headlines, but whatever they do that gets such attention usually has to be unusual in some way. If Wal-Mart Stores announces, as it did in January, that it will sell less sugary packaged food and lower the price of vegetables, that is a story by virtue of the enormous size of the company and the number of businesses within its supply chain.
Similarly, when the basketball arena at the University of Texas decided to monitor its daily electricity usage and slashed its bills as a result, that is a story because sports arenas, particularly in Texas, are not usually linked with energy conservation.
China’s progress on clean energy, of course, is always a big topic in the West, which fears that the country’s low-cost manufacturing will corner the market for making solar panels and wind turbines and also worries about China’s rapidly growing fleet of coal-fired power plants.
So where does coverage go from here? One issue journalists are increasingly latching onto is the emptiness of politicians’ vows on energy and climate. As the comedian Jon Stewart recently pointed out, every U.S. president since Richard M. Nixon has vowed to wean the United States off foreign oil and develop substantial alternative energy sources at home. None has succeeded. Similarly, in the United States, some states’ renewable energy requirements have overshot reality. Green-minded California, for example, did not meet its goal of getting 20 percent of its big utilities’ power from renewables by 2010.
Given such failures, might the news media eventually lose interest in the topic completely? Energy issues will always be near the fore, but interest appears to be dwindling to some extent regarding climate change policy coverage in the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen summit meeting in 2009.
“In the newsroom, the editors think there is this fatigue among their audience” after Copenhagen, said Asbjorn Jorgensen, an associate professor at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Arhus. His students have asked newspaper editors in a dozen countries about their climate coverage and found them backing off.
Copenhagen was a media bonanza, Mr. Jorgensen noted, but the U.N. climate meetings three months ago in Cancún, Mexico, got essentially “zero coverage.”
Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, noted that 30 or 40 years ago journalists were writing about visible pollution — “the stuff that came out of sewers and factories” and got dumped into rivers — while the pollution issues now, including carbon dioxide, are largely invisible to the naked eye.
“It’s really difficult to cover slow-onset issues, where you don’t have dead fish,” Mr. Ackland said.
By Kate Galbraith
| | More Details | | | | | | China Sustainability Initiative | | 2011-02-20 10:42:31 |  The China Sustainability Initiative (CSI) is a series of professional development programs and client services focusing on leadership for sustainability.
- Providing graduate students and professionals with international work experience;
Offering applied research and consulting services to partner organizations; and
Facilitating cooperative research projects and international professional exchanges.
Programs & Projects
Travel and gain international work experience in South China
May 17-28, 2011
Join us for two weeks in beautiful Guangxi Province of South China
Gain international work experience: Students and faculty will work as a professional consulting team to complete a sustainable development project with local partners.
Eligible students include graduate and senior undergraduates, alumni interested in lifelong and service learning, and professionals seeking international work experience.
Download a brochure: 12 days in Guangxi; 6 credits of graduate coursework [PDF 1.7 MB]
Contact us at nrstaff@nvc.vt.edu
SoURCE: Natural Resources Program at Virginia Tech's Northern Virginia Center
| | More Details | | | | | | Columbia University Gives the Big Apple a Running Start on Better Buildings | | 2011-02-16 16:21:21 | 
By the time President Obama announced the Better Buildings Initiative last week, forward-looking players in the energy efficiency game were already a few steps ahead. One example is New York City, which has partnered up with Columbia University to create the NYC Urban Technology Innovative Center. Its mission is to create new green jobs and business opportunities in the city, by developing and commercializing new energy efficiency technologies.
Better, Greener Buildings
Compared to the futuristic stuff that’s going on with solar power, emerging materials and biofuels (just to name a few), buildings don’t seem all that exciting. Guess again – buildings are a major factor in greenhouse gas emissions, and commercial buildings gobbled up 20 percent of the energy in the U.S. economy last year. The President’s initiative is designed to encourage the private sector to upgrade inefficient older buildings through new tax incentives and financing opportunities for small business. There is also a green job-training component, and a “Race to Green” incentive for local governments to streamline their permitting processes.
The Better Buildings Challenge
Where Columbia and New York jumped the gun is in the initiative’s “Better Buildings Challenge,” in which the President is calling upon business and academic leaders to – well, to lead by example. Companies and universities that save energy and meet certain goals will be eligible for goodies such as public recognition and technical assistance. That’s where the Urban Technologies Innovation Center comes in. It will be managed by Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and its focus will be on connecting manufacturers and building owners with new research and technologies. As pithily stated by the center’s executive director, Jack McGourty, “New technology means new businesses and jobs.”
More and More Green Jobs
The Better Buildings Initiative has the potential to be a green jobs powerhouse — just check out the big bucks that went into energy efficiency upgrades for the Empire State Building. These jobs benefit the job-holder of course, and they also result in benefits for people and businesses by lowering utility bills and improving productivity. As the White House points out, in part the new initiative builds on the success of Recovery Act programs that also created beneficial green jobs. That’s nice that the White House is so optimistic, but it would sure help things along if all those legislators who made such a great big deal about job creation during the 2010 election campaign would stop messing around with women and start working on some legislation that actually helps people get jobs.
By Tina Casey
| | More Details | | | | | | Unethical to Brand Oil Sands Ethical? | | 2011-02-13 17:35:18 | It's human nature to seek an honourable reason to avoid a pressing problem. But this distraction is deadly.
Ezra Levant's powerful but critically flawed argument re-branding Alberta’s oil sands as "ethical" appears to be re-shaping Canadian public policy as Prime Minister Harper and Environment Minister Peter Kent adopt the catch phrase -- despite both ministers having not read the original work. As the catch phrase "ethical oil" enters the lexicon of Canadian political language, the need for a productive facts-based debate in Canada, a debate leading to real conservation solutions, appears to be more urgent than ever.
This is especially true in British Columbia where candidates in the Liberal party leadership race have systematically failed to embrace discussion of environmental and conservation policies as an integral part of their policy platform offerings.
Critical debate is important because arguments that the oil sands contain almost half the world's total known oil reserves and will therefore ensure world peace, global food and energy supplies for the next half century are dangerously flawed. Current oil sand production of two million barrels a day is technically limited by water availability to approximately a maximum of five million barrels a day, a mere fraction of the world's daily consumption. This misrepresentation promises economic stability yet ignores global (peak) oil supply concerns, the technical upper limit of oil sand production, and climate change. Alberta's oil sands development will not deliver global economic stability in the face of these issues.
Pipelines that import risk
At risk is our often forgotten dependency on the services of healthy natural systems which are as important as economic benefits, and in ignoring this reality the first of many weaknesses of the argument is exposed. In examining the benefits of the proposed Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, consider the grizzly bear family, photographed in an estuary not 10 kilometres from the proposed west coast tanker route that penetrates the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. This area provides many valuable food-based sustainable jobs in the salmon, halibut and shellfish fisheries. An accident comparable to the Exxon Valdez spill or the Gulf of Mexico eruption in these treacherous waters would render this estuary and the ecosystems that support rich wild fisheries in the region fallow. The "at risk" grizzly family is a metaphor for our own lives. Pipelines in these pristine environments import risk for which there is no insurance -- just the cost of desecration.
Levant's notion of ethical oil involves little more than choosing "to buy oil from nice guys". It comforts us by redirecting our judgment to the dealer and away from the consequences of the deal that we are making. It is not this simple. If an oil source is to be judged as ethical, then the list of considerations made must include its long term greenhouse gas emissions, contributions to ocean acidification, the rate at which a major watershed is made toxic and the cumulative impacts on future generations. We should also consider buying preferentially from nations that use their oil revenues to develop renewable energy sources.
Furthermore the arguments' rudimentary moral appraisal implies no framework in which oil from sources with the lowest carbon footprint are utilized first, their revenues applied to fuel switching strategies, thereby deferring the worst oil for last use (hopefully never). Until means to accurately measure and compare the virtues of oil source A versus oil source B are developed we must ask the question, is it unethical to brand Alberta's oil sands as ethical?
Levant's thesis assumes that we must continue to use oil, ignoring the environmental impacts and offers permission to proceed by establishing the good character of the vendor. This massive (unethical?) distraction is compelling because human nature will seek an honorable reason to avoid resolving a pressing problem and the hard endeavor of seeking progressive solutions.
What an honest discussion would include
Yet solutions are desperately needed, for as the IUCN has identified, habitat destruction will cause a far greater extinction rate than global warming will over the coming 30 to 50 years. Thus the need to protect regions of rich bio-diversity is ever more pressing. Hopefully these provocative notions will spark a solutions and evidence based conservation debate here in Canada. A debate that could build upon the promising Great Bear agreement which introduced ecosystem based management and stewardship into the industrial logging of the west coast -- a solution spurred by the Rainforest Solutions Project, a coalition of solutions-based environmental groups. It is precisely this kind of pragmatic endeavour that Canada needs to openly embrace. Indeed the small catalytic organization Canopy working with the progressive boreal timber companies is adopting such measures.
Such discussions framed by ecologically sound solutions, could allow the burgeoning energy industry, government, First Nations, the environmental movement and the people of Canada to embrace solutions that may consider, as an example:
- Wide scale comprehensive protection areas of rich bio-diversity such as the great bear rainforest and the marine environment of the central coast
Adoption of wide scale industrial development zones in which resource industries can execute business at the highest levels of efficiency
Legislation of strict environmental protection within industrial zones to ensure, where possible, wide scale pollution issues do not transgress industrial zone boundaries
Legislation of meaningful GHG emission targets and technology adoption regimes within the industrialized zones to ensure best in-class reduction and elimination of pollutants.
Invest energy revenues in transformative clean energy projects (carbon capture – solar – hydro)
Legislate rapid adoption of next generation remediation technologies that ensure long term impacts are minimized or eliminated within the industrial zones
The rebranding of Alberta's energy development as "ethical" has invigorated the oil sands debate, and as conservationists we hope it sparks a responsible solutions based debate. Canada's democratic heritage calls for, and its growing energy economy requires this debate.
Levant's arguments simply do not justify calling the oil sands a source of ethical oil. The ongoing development of public policy must consider, even require, the use of oil revenues for clean energy development. Otherwise we will surely fail to protect the manifold services of the living world we rely on. How will we limit the process of ocean acidification? Or ensure reductions in greenhouse emissions? Until these needs are met with far more certainty, branding any oil source as ethical is a morally questionable exercise given our current knowledge.
This is of critical importance as the Liberal party leadership candidates promote accelerated oil and gas development in British Columbia -- programs that generate short term wealth but place long term prosperity at risk.
By Colin Campbell and Andrew S. Wright
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