Browsing over 100 environmental news sources so you don’t have to. Contact library@wmrc.uiuc.edu with questions, comments, and suggestions.
The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:
Read the full story in Environmental Capital.
American consumers just coming to grips with higher gasoline prices can now count on another worry: higher electricity prices. Something has to give—but will it be electricity demand, or power-company profits?
Read the full story in Environmental Capital.
Here’s a challenge: How do you keep clamoring for subsidies when your industry shatters growth records with numbing regularity?
Read the full story at News.com.
IBM, Google, and Microsoft apparently are model citizens when it comes to reducing their carbon footprint, while Apple has a long way to go.
A roundup of green tech news from News.com.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Consumer interest in buying green environmentally friendly products and healthy organic food remains high despite the tough economy and rising food and energy prices. A recent market research survey released by Mambo Sprouts Marketing showed that consumers are placing a priority on buying green and finding ways to keep doing so.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Monitoring Earth’s rising greenhouse gas levels will require a global data collection network 10 times larger than the one currently in place in order to quantify regional progress in emission reductions, according to a new research commentary by University of Colorado and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers.
An Arkansas nanotechnology company has been awarded $224,997 from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to develop a green alternative to fluorescent lighting.
The Center for Resource Solutions announced today that The Philadelphia Phillies are the first Major League Baseball team to join Green-e Marketplace by purchasing enough Green-e Certified renewable energy to meet 100% of the annual electricity needs for its stadium, Citizens Bank Park. The team purchased 20,000 MWh of Green-e Energy Certified renewable energy certificates from WindStreet Energy. As a member of Green-e Marketplace, The Philadelphia Phillies can now display the Green-e logo to inform consumers that they purchased 100% Green-e Certified renewable energy.
An EPA independent advisory committee, National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT), today released a new report identifying actions that EPA and the investment community can take and partnerships they can create to achieve the goal of greater long-term private sector investment in the commercialization of environmental technologies.
The report, EPA and the Venture Capital Community: Building Bridges to Commercialize Technology, April 2008, is the third in a series of reports by the NACEPT Environmental Technology Subcommittee. The Subcommittee’s other two earlier reports on environmental technology are: EPA Technology Programs: Engaging the Marketplace, and EPA Technology Programs and Intra-Agency Coordination.
NACEPT, a balanced panel of representatives from academia, business and industry, nongovernmental organizations, and state, local and tribal governments, advises the EPA Administrator on a broad range of environmental policy, technology and management issues.
To view all three reports, go to http://www.epa.gov/ocem/nacept/reports/index.html or to http://www.epa.gov/etop
eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) today announced the opening of an environmentally friendly building on its North Campus in San Jose. It is the first building in San Jose to be built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold standards for new construction, which is the second-highest LEED rating a building can receive. The building sits on a campus with the largest commercial solar installation in the city.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule further outlining steps that state, local and tribal governments must take to reduce fine particle pollution (PM2.5). The rule describes how to apply the New Source Review (NSR) program at facilities that emit fine particles. EPA’s NSR program requires industrial facilities to obtain permits outlining emissions controls for target air pollutants before they begin construction.
The rule affects areas that do not meet the 1997 PM2.5 standards. Those areas must meet the standards by 2010.
Today’s rule complements the agency’s PM2.5 final implementation rule issued on April 25, 2007, which addresses the non-New Source Review provisions of PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standards. A related rule, proposed on Sept. 21, 2007, would complete the PM2.5 preconstruction review program framework by establishing increments, significant impact levels, and significant monitoring concentrations for EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration program. Together, these three rules will establish the framework for implementing preconstruction permit components of the 1997 PM2.5 air quality standards. For more information on this rule, visit: epa.gov/nsr
Friday, May 9, 2008
http://cms.h2e-online.org/teleconferences/calendar/details/398
1:00 eastern, 12:00 central, 11:00 mountain and 10:00 pacific and will last for 90 minutes.
Note: A subscription is required to access Practice Greenhealth webinars. Visit http://www.h2e-online.org/subscribe/index.htm for more information.
Topic
Case studies of health care projects recently certified under the LEED for New Construction rating system will offer a survey of successful green building strategies and a snapshot of current architectural and engineering design innovations in the health care environment.
Take Home Value (THV)
Presenters
Please note, this webinar will take advantage of updated technology. Your confirmation email will list the phone number and web address required to access the call. No visual presentation will be available for download on the site.
To register for the call:
http://cms.h2e-online.org/teleconferences/calendar/details/398
The January-March 2008 WMRC Library Acquisitions List is now available on the Library’s web site.
Read the full story in USA Today.
Even though he drives a fuel-efficient car, real estate agent Harlan Comee of Yorba Linda, Calif., says that unrelenting gas-price increases are forcing him to rethink his sales strategy.
He’s narrowed his geographic focus when looking for new homes to represent. And when with clients, he tries to show as many properties in one area as possible to curb some of the back-and-forth trips he used to make. “Now, I try to say, ‘We’re going to concentrate on the north today,’ ” he says.
Read the full story at Environmental Leader.
At Yahoo! headquarters, we recently installed an interactive touch screen next to our corporate cafeteria. The Green Screen, as we fondly call it, tracks our electricity consumption by building over time. Employees can compare one building against another and translate it into kilowatt-hours, dollars, or (for those who want something more tangible) laptop-hours or compact florescent lightbulb-hours.
Read the full story in Environmental Leader.
Reducing the weight of Honest Kids organic juice drink pouch bulk packs sold at Wal-Mart is one of the success stories highlighted at the April 30 Federal Trade Commission “Eco in the Marketplace” public workshop on product packaging claims.
Read the full story in Forbes Magazine.
As climate change and renewable-energy policies level the playing field in the energy industry, alternative-energy companies are racing to assure investors, policymakers and the public that they can scale to meet the needs of energy-starved consumers. During the last few years, a clutch of clean energy projects have emerged on a scale never seen before. Forbes.com has identified the biggest and boldest projects among them.
We surveyed the clean energy landscape for new and recently completed projects in solar, wind, geothermal and wave energy that produced the most grid-connected electricity. Forbes.com also identified the green government initiative and green building project with the highest estimated dollar value. The results are different from what most people would expect.
Read the full post at Triple Pundit.
Taco Bell recently announced their plans to install new “Grill-To-Order” cooking machines in all of their locations. The company is making this step to not only reduce water and energy usage, but also improve cost efficiency. Each installation is estimated to save $5,900 a year in electricity cost per store. System-wide Taco Bell expects to save more than $17 million a year.
Read the full story in Environmental Leader.
Eighty-two percent of senior finance and risk managers believe global climate change will require changes to their business models in the years ahead. Yet, when it comes to taking proactive steps to manage their weather risk, 51 percent concede that their companies are not well prepared to cope with the current day-to-day economic risks posed by the weather.
Read the full story in Environmental Leader.
Google, Anheuser-Busch and Levi Strauss had the largest score improvement, each jumping over 20 points, in Climate Counts’ second annual Company Scorecard. Improvement was broad, however with the average company score improving 22 percent over the past year. Nike passed last year’s high scorer, Canon, to become the top scored company.
Read the full story at News.com.
It’s not as flashy as solar panels or dramatic as wind turbines, but energy efficiency is fast becoming viewed as a significant “source” of energy. Some people refer to megawatts not used as “negawatts” (for negative watts).
EnerNoc is one of a handful of demand response companies in the field. To ease the load on the power grid during peak times, demand response systems can turn down electricity usage at commercial buildings or consumers’ homes.
A full-color, graphic version of this newsletter is available online at http://www.greenerbuildings.com/enewsletter.
Green Your Facility, Boost Your Bottom Line
By Lisa Raffin
The most energy-efficient businesses in the U.S. can consume a third less energy than a more conventional company. By arming themselves with knowledge about the financial benefits of sustainability upgrades, facility managers can make these efficiency programs an easy sell.
Smart Water Management: A Low-Risk Green Initiative with a Fast Payback
By Tom Ash
By gaining control over water use, companies help protect a precious resource, reduce runoff pollution and comply with new conservation legislation. Saving water also has a powerful multiplier effect by reducing the vast amount of energy expended in transporting it.
Homebuilders Getting Greener, But Lacking Sustainability Leader
All of the 13 largest U.S. homebuilders have taken up green building practices, but even though some are doing much more than others, there is no standout sustainable homebuilder, according to a new report.
REI Releases Second Stewardship Report, Shows Progress, Obstacles
The outdoor retailer’s 2007 Stewardship Report finds a range of improvements in overall environmental performance and reporting, although it also highlights areas for improvement in reducing emissions and supply chain auditing.
Target Turns to Submetering to Track Energy Use
More than 200 Target stores have been fitted with submetering systems so building managers can closely monitor how energy is used throughout their facilities.
RREEF Commits to Real Estate Sustainability Challenge
RREEF North America, part of Deutsche Bank, has taken up the voluntary 7-Point Challenge of commercial real estate environmental goals.
LEED Certification Could Benefit from Booming Industry in Coming Years: Report
As existing buildings become more efficient and new buildings are designed to have a much smaller impact, the green building industry is growing rapidly, from $12 billion in revenues last year to more than $42 billion by 2015, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan, and LEED is the certification of choice for that industry, although it faces some obstacles to continued success.
Green HQ for Discovery’s ‘Choppers’
Made famous in the Discovery Channel show, “American Choppers,” Orange County Choppers is now housed in a 92,000 square-foot building that sports exterior glazing upgrades, daylight harvesting, variable air volume system, efficient rooftop HVAC equipment, efficient lighting and demand-based garage exhaust, among other features.
Sustainability Gaining Interest in Landscape Architecture Industry: Survey
Nearly three-quarters of landscape architects said in a recent survey that their clients are very interested in sustainable issues. Top issues relate to water, energy efficiency, accreditation, habitat and green roofs.
Vestar Commits to Green Retail Spaces
The company’s GreenStar initiative will push Vestar toward the development of LEED-certified retail spaces. Vestar is currently testing LEED guidelines for the retail sector as part of a pilot program.
AIA Names Top 10 Green Building Projects
Their purposes vary — schools, condominiums, even a non-profit headquarters — but their sustainable architecture and green building innovations scored 10 projects from across the country a nod from the American Institute of Architects.
D.C. Area Governments, Businesses Plan 400 Building Retrofits
Area governments and business plan to improve the energy efficiency of more then 400 buildings, with investments from government topping $170 million.
Wood Products and Carbon Protocols
This report from Dovetail Partners looks at how the storage of carbon within wood products and the low energy and fossil fuel intensity of wood products has been ignored by policy analysts.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
Vehicles, both hot and not, have been enjoying an on-screen heyday. But Toyota’s Prius has remained something of a novelty act on the big screen.
Read the full story at News.com.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $126.6 million in grants on Tuesday to test carbon capture and storage in underground caverns.
Two sites in Ohio and California will try to verify that carbon dioxide gas can be pumped in geological formations and stored safely. The CO2 will be delivered from an ethanol plant in Ohio and a power plant in California.
Read the full story in Water & Wastewater News.
Even with the addition of thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and new teaching and research facilities to support them, Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, has managed drastic drops in water and energy consumption, making the nation’s sixth-largest university a campus conservation leader.
Read the full story in Water & Wastewater News.
A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has found that silver nanoparticles may destroy benign bacteria that are used to remove ammonia from wastewater treatment systems. The study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Aviation and the Environment: NextGen and Research and Development Are Keys to Reducing Emissions and Their Impact on Health and Climate, by Gerald L. Dillingham, director, physical infrastructure issues, before the Subcommittee on Aviation, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. GAO-08-706T, May 6.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-706T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08706thigh.pdf
Read the full story at News.com.
The United States can slash its use of petroleum dramatically by 2035 by adding a heavy dose of hybrids to the market, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
To return U.S. fuel use to pre-2000 levels, however, carmakers would have to improve efficiency and consumers would have to learn to love hybrids, trading features like increased speed and size for higher fuel efficiency.
Read the full story at News.com.
The “slow food” movement came first, followed by “slow work” and even “slow medicine.” Next, will people let the Internet relax a little for the sake of ecological sustainability?
Researchers are finding that data centers can make relatively simple power consumption tweaks that mimic those long available for personal computers, as New Scientist reports.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected Drexel University as a winner in EPA’s fourth annual People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition for an innovative biodiesel project created by Drexel students.
Read the full story in the Sacramento Bee.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency probably won’t follow California in ridding drinking water of a rocket fuel chemical that has contaminated supplies in Rancho Cordova and in dozens of other communities around the country, a top agency official said Tuesday.
Federal inaction on regulating the drinking-water contaminant perchlorate has left the Pentagon, NASA and defense contractors free to negotiate levels of cleanup with government agencies, potentially trimming the cost of restoring groundwater.
Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing entitled “Perchlorate and TCE in Water.” Statements, photos, and a webcast are available on the committee web site.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
The mayor of San Francisco wants to make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary, on the pain of having garbage pickups suspended.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
The suit is aimed at pressing Italy to take action against a problem that has enraged locals, embarrassed national pride and influenced recent national elections.
For a full-color, graphic version of this newsletter, go to http://www.greenercomputing.com/enewsletter.
How to Develop a Green IT Culture
By Andy Lawrence, The 451 Group
IT has suffered an ‘eco black eye’ over the course of the past year even though its contributions to climate change are minimal compared to other sources. Andy Lawrence shows you how you can make IT a better environmental citizen by developing an eco-efficient IT department.
IBM Creates Data Center Alliance, Releases Energy Efficiency Tools
IBM is continuing its efforts to green data centers, bringing together vendors to support energy standards and creating new tools for data center users to monitor energy use.
Virtualization Common Among Retailers: Survey
Out of 205 IT decision-makers surveyed, almost three out of four have adopted virtualization for reasons ranging from saving energy to better security.
Digital Realty Trust Releases Data Center Efficiency Stats, Receives Green Award
The data center owner and manager has adopted the Power Usage Effectiveness metric and is measuring the energy efficiency of its data centers throughout the world.
Corporate Execs Must Take Charge of Green IT, Report Says
Hiring a C-level ‘Energy Czar’ position and creating a corporate average data-center efficiency metric are among some of the top-level changes companies should adopt in order to make serious reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report released by the Uptime Institute and McKinsey.
SynapSense Software Offers Real-Time Imaging for Data Center Energy Use
The company’s LiveImaging feature allows operators to gauge efficiencies in energy use, heating and cooling, humidity and pressure differentials, making possible on-the-fly adjustments to data center performance.
Microsoft Invests $500K in Energy Efficient Computing Research
The funding is part of the companyís Sustainable Computing Program, which focuses on energy efficiency and the ìpay for playî principle where the amount of energy used by a computing device is proportional to the demand placed on it. The award recipients include University of Tennessee, Stanford, Harvard and University of Oklahoma.
Craft a Green IT Action Plan
This report, made available specially to GreenerComputing readers by InfoTech, explains how to create an overall green IT plan and set up different types of projects.
Climate Counts’ (www.climatecounts.org) second annual Company Scorecard shows scored companies making climate improvements across most industry sectors. Eighty-four percent of the scored companies — among them some of the world’s largest — made improvements in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and to make information about those actions easily accessible to consumers. The Scorecard, first released in June 2007, scores 56 major corporations in well-known consumer sectors – from apparel to electronics to fast food – on their commitment to reversing climate change.
Energy Matters, the Best Practices quarterly of DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program, is now available online. The issue focus is Resources to Save Energy Now. Highlights include:
Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.
Your personal computing habits may need a green makeover. Today’s power-hungry computers are eating an ever-bigger share of the energy pie chart. With new, more energy-efficient technologies and green initiatives like the federal Energy Star program and the Green Electronics Council’s Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), consumers can finally shop with energy efficiency in mind. But that’s just the beginning. It helps to know that computer companies like Dell are taking steps toward becoming carbon neutral. And knowing about PC components—when to power down and when to use the energy-saving options of new operating systems such as Microsoft’s Vista—can do much to save money and reduce the environmental impact of personal computing.
Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.
Fifteen members of the Rockefeller family publicly called on ExxonMobil Corporation, the company which emerged from family patriarch John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire, to start looking beyond short-term oil profits in planning for a carbon-constrained future. The Rockefeller descendents, who today own a sizable but minority portion of shares in ExxonMobil, would also like to see the company fund a task force to study the consequences of global warming on poor economies as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emission at its own facilities around the world.
Read the full story at News.com.
Solar company HelioVolt and Architectural Glass & Aluminum on Tuesday announced a partnership to produce glass windows capable of generating electricity.
Read the full story at News.com.
In a sign of “green” going mainstream, an IBM survey of CEOs finds that socially oriented customers are wielding more power, aided by social networking on the Web.
The survey, published Tuesday, drew on face-to-face interviews with 1,130 CEOs around the world. It found that CEOs feel less prepared as they would like to deal with the pace of change.
What You Need to Know About Energy. Washington, DC : National Academies Press, 2008. Available free to read online or download. Good resource for middle and high school teachers.
This overview begins with a description of the status of energy in 21st-century America, including the main sources of energy used in the United States and a survey of the nation’s energy demand versus the world’s available supply. Then it looks ahead to the quest for greater energy efficiency and emerging technologies. Along the way it addresses how social concerns influence our choice of energy options and how those options affect our everyday lives. The goal of this booklet is to present an accurate picture of America’s current and projected energy needs and to describe options that are likely to play a significant role in our energy future. No one can afford to remain uninformed about the energy future because we all have a stake in its outcome.
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
Rebecca Hosking’s moment, when a happy English farm girl cried tears that changed her life, came on a speck of sugar-white beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“All you could smell was death,” Hosking recalled, sitting snugly in a 600-year-old pub in her rainy home town, which has been transformed by her epiphany two years ago on Midway Atoll.
The beach on Midway, 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu, was covered with thousands of dead albatrosses rotting in the tropical sun. In their split-open bellies, the BBC wildlife film producer said, she saw the plastic that had killed them: cigarette lighters, pens, toys, pill bottles, knives and forks, golf balls and toothbrushes.
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
New homes built in Montgomery County would have to meet federal energy efficiency standards under innovative legislation approved yesterday by the County Council over the objections of builders who said that the mandate would drive up costs for consumers.
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests.
Read the full story at News.com.
Software plays a key role in the clean-tech world, whether helping consumers size up their carbon footprints and crunch the costs of solar panels, or aiding manufacturers in reducing toxicity throughout the supply chain.
Autodesk unveiled an add-in in April to enable designers using prototyping software Inventor to calculate the carbon emissions of an array of products.
Read the full story at News.com.
The first regulated carbon market in the U.S. will take its cue from eBay.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”) is scheduled to go online September 10. It’s a cap-and-trade system for carbon that electric power generators in 10 Northeast states need to participate in.
Read the full story at News.com.
You could call it grass-roots green.
The second season of Energy Smackdown, a TV show that challenges homeowners in the Boston area to “green” their lives, kicked off Sunday.
Households, including my own, have signed up to take up several challenges to lower their carbon footprint and compete against families in other nearby cities–in this case between Medford, Cambridge, and Arlington, Mass.
Read the full story at News.com.
Algae may one day be the preferred feedstock for biofuels. But in the meantime, it can have a job cleaning up waste water.
Seattle-area start-up Bionavitas is one of several companies moving into the algae business. Because it doesn’t compete with food and has a high energy density, algae has a lot of potential as a source of biodiesel.
But it will take years before algae biodiesel will make a dent in the petroleum diesel market, said Bionavitas CEO and co-founder Michael Weaver.
So in the short term, the company is growing algae for alternative markets: oils for pharmaceuticals and waste water treatment.
