Social Media Update

So if you follow Earth911.com’s Twitter account, you may already be aware that we’ve got something new brewing in the social media department.

We’re looking to grow our outreach efforts in the upcoming months and offer additional sources of information.

We hope to share with our audience not only what is happening in the recycling world, but also what is going on within the walls of Earth911.com. What else are you looking for? Feel free to post your comments and thoughts below.

 

New Phoenix Convention Center

The new Phoenix Convention Center, built with sustainability in mind, seemed like the perfect setting for the Energy and Environment Conference (which started as a conference on acid rain, but has broken its boundaries).

Here are some examples of the building architecture, with its west-facing light deflectors, and the booths on the exhibit floor.

Unique sun shades on west side of the new Phoenix Convention Center

The New Phoenix Convention Center, where EUEC is happening

Booths dedicated to moving us to clean energy

Monitoring GHGs is big business

 

News from the EPA to the EUEC

Sam Napolitano, 25-year veteran of the EPA, is now in charge of its cap-and-trade program. He congratulates the people at the EUEC conference for looking at the future and holding three days of very good technical discussions on how to get there. (There are many tracks to sustainability at EUEC, from solar to GHG (greenhouse gas) management to carbon trading to emissions testing).

Napolitano’s presentations shows that during the last twenty-five years, power companies have actually been leading in energy efficiency programs and bringing air quality non-attainment areas into compliance. There has been a major change in the way both consumers and producers use energy over the past five years, shifting people away from oil to natural gas, and utility companies from coal to natural gas.

States are now engaged in their own cap and trade climate control programs. Especially in the Western states, many governmental initiatives are under way. The heart of the action for utility companies is in coal-fired generation. Since 1980, there has been a 50% reduction in SO2(sulfur dioxide). Massive amounts of reductions have happened in the east and in Ohio, where acid rain was the largest problem. The west uses relative low-sulfur coal, because its power plants are newer. For NOx (nitrous oxide) reductions have been made in Tennessee, and in the east.

The power of Google Earth is that we can now see the biggest emitters! Sulfate emitters are a big cause of acid rain, and they also cause the aggravation of pulmonary and cardiovascular conditions in the American population. From 1990-2007, you can see where the controls went on in the east to cause the improvement. EPA thinks it saved 20,000 premature deaths from the success of this program. All this is on the EPA web site.

Utilities have been the major contributors to the improvement of the SO2 situation. In nitrate reduction, utilities are less of a player.(Big farms in the midwest emit NO2 that becomes nitrates). Northeast New England has seen a reduction in nitrates and sulfates of 40%, which has made major public health improvements.

All three emissions trading programs are in full effect:Annual SO2, Annual NOx and Seasonal NOx. All the EPA’s controls seem to be functioning well.

So far, this is a congratulatory speech from EPA to the utility companies, designed to motivate them to build on their current successes and move forward. But now he tells them that they are a full one third of the total GHG emissions in the entire country, mostly because of coal-fired plants, and he turns to a cautionary note.

He tells them the EPA now has new leadership, Lisa Jackson, who hasn’t put her people in place yet. And the agency is in the midst of a transition, the big decisions for which haven’t been made yet. There will be new ozone attainment plans to be developed by states, too, which will involve SO2 and NOx again . There is federal legislation, there is a revisit of the California waiver, and there are the states. Everyone is going to be very active because the consumers are driving toward cleaner air. Napolitano predicts an enormous amount of activity in Washington on the subject of mercury, too.

The applause is lukewarm. Now the audience realizes they have more work to do:-)

 

A Short History of Air Quality Legislation

The attempt to control air quality in the United States started with the Air Pollution Control Act in 1955.
1963 -Later on, with Kennedy and Johnson’s encouragement, and a deadly smog attack in London, Congress created a unit to work on air quality. The unit was assigned to the department of HEW (Health, Education and Welfare. )
1965- HEW was first called upon to establish emission standards for cars. Ralph Nader had published “Unsafe at Any Speed” and the auto industry was accused of conspiring to block new emissions standards.
Edmund Muskie from ME began to make noise in Washington as a maverick. Became the chairman of the very first environmental committee on the environment.
1967 – signing of the Air Quality Act. HEW was asked to create criteria for air quality and then the states were asked to take those criteria and make standards. But the act wasn’t specific enough to have teeth, and not one state met the deadline for standards.
1970 – Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, there was a large oil spill off Santa Barbara, and
photos from space exposed air quality on earth.
1970 – Nixon signs National Environmental Protection Act” “shall we make our peace with nature.” William Ruckelshaus was appointed the first chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon was trying to pre-empt Muskie on environmental issues.

The Air Quality Act of 1970 was a piece of legislation that marked a serious escalation of our war on air pollution.
Air quality regulation was founded on a legally defensible position: health effects. For the time, the authors of the regulation did a pretty good job of connecting air quality to health effects, but they didn’t know what they didn’t know when they established the standards. The challenge for today’s EPA is that we have mountains of data suggesting that the thresholds are wrong. We know more about pulmonary effects and secondary pollutants than we used to.
The 1970 Act was designed to address SO2, NOX and particulates. But they didn’t understand the ozone layer, and how air pollution travels outside state boundaries.

By the mid-70s, there was a need to refresh the Act because the auto companies couldn’t meet the emissions standards, but Muskie didn’t have as much influence in Congress as he used to.
1977- The environmental movement gets more air quality help through a refreshment of NEPA

In the 1980′s not much was done on the environmental front, and in fact most environmental regulations were rolled back under Reagan, and Congressional discussions were characterized by procedural discussions and false starts. The next new issue was acid rain, but it was hard to imagine that emissions from coal mines in West Virginia could affect rainfall across the country, so Congress didn’t do much on the environment going forward, but George Bush 39 cared about the environment and created a braintrust to work on acid rain.
1989 – Bush rolls out standards for acid rain program, which contained an allowances trading program.
1990- Clean Air Act Amendments concentrated on these acid rain allowance trades and embodied a market-based approach to clean air regulations. The Environmental Defense Fund broke the logjam on environmental issues.

Looking ahead, we can learn a lot by looking back. We face massive expenditures in an environment of economic uncertainty, and we have both new players and some of the old guys still in Congress. Guarded optimism is the outlook. Fifty years of evolution give hope that we can arrive at ways to meet the challenges of today.

1977-

 

Renewable Energy: Utilities Should Lead the Change

The new Phoenix Convention Center, built with sustainability in mind, is the perfect setting for the EUEC Conference, at which 450 presentations will talk about renewables, carbon capture, electric vehicles, nuclear power, and all the other technologies necessary to close the gap of climate change.

Many of the people at the conference are from the electric utility industry, and have never been known as leaders. But in the very first session, change is obvious.
The VERY FIRST speaker predicts that the electric industry is going to be transformed, not by a disruptive technology, but by a disruptive policy. Society has told the utility industry: “here’s where we want to go, now you get us there.” This will involve using the full portfolio–from new energies to serious demand side programs, to retrofitting.

The theme of this year’s conference seems to be leading for change; the conference will address President Obama Energy Proposals. Over 450 world leading experts will make presentations on Securing Americas Energy Independence; Renewable Energy & Climate Change Strategies; and Global Warming & Carbon. Many of them are scared to death — not only of climate change, but of the new administration.

The opening speaker, Paul Bonavia, used to be with Xcel Energy, which had gone far in the direction of wind power. Wind power, hs says, is real; you can build a renewable carbon reduction strategy on around wind. Now he is the CEO of Unisource Energy, parent of Tucson Electric, which is building a strategy around solar. He is urging utility people to get out in front of the curve, rather than being dragged kicking and screaming by the customers.

The big issues around developing renewable energy strategy are:
1)Getting real. There’s no magic bullet. It needs an entire portfolio of resources to make the transition. And there’s a need for access to capital for big infrastructure investments.
2)Exerting leadership. All policymakers have to be involved and must get ahead of the curve and engage everybody. Let your utility companies develop innovation.
3)The need for partnership. Too much policy has been made through litigation in the regulated utility business, and that’s a poor model for achieving progress and motivating participation. Bonavia says we should move to a partnership model.

One of the genuine value propositions of renewable energy is that it’s a hedge. Utilities deal in very long time periods, and make very large capital investments that are inflexible. So they are always dealing in long-term forecasts.

So interesting how he is urging his fellow executives to lead, rather than follow. He wants to have a seat at the policy table as the customers and governments make the decisions. Quite refreshing:-)

 

Ring in the New!

When Earth911 launched in 1992, the Internet was not a part of everyone’s life. The original concept was for a recycling database that could be accessed through a call center at 1-800-CLEANUP. Over time, that evolved into an automated system featuring the voice of Ted Danson.

It’s the end of an era. Today the voice of Ted Danson goes away as the greeting for our automated recycling database, replaced by familiar interactive robotic voices and a much improved system to help you locate recycling sites by typing in your item and your zip code on your mobile phone. (Or on your land line, if you still have one:-) The goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to find a place to recycle your used items, materials, furniture, e-waste, either on the web or through the phone.

Some time this afternoon, an all-new 1-800-CLEANUP service will launch, with a completely updated database, a new phone system, and new voices.

 

When I was at Intel, more than ten years ago, Will Swope was already a star. While many of Intel’s stars have retired or left, Swope is still there, now the VP of Sustainability, which is a major initiative for Intel. He’s one of the luminaries at Davos this week.

Here Swope talks about the economy and the environment, insisting that the environment doesn’t have to take a back seat to the financial crisis. Everyone can do a little something, he argues, like using two degrees less heat or cooling, or taking two less car trips a week. “We should never let this crisis go to waste,” says Swope. We could all eat one less meal of meat a week, one more conservation effort a week. We could do more about recycling and more about an energy audit.

At the collective level, we have several large issues to deal with. We don’t have the economics worked out for the two places on earth that can absorb carbon dioxide — the ocean and the rainforest. And we need to find a new way of talking about different energy sources. We need to call them “sustainable energy sources” instead of just “alternative energy sources.”

These are simplistic changes, but if each individual made them and helped the collective consider the larger issues, the world would be a better place.

 

Eco-friendly home in India

There is a thin layer of concrete under the sod roof

Ceiling of bamboo and eucalyptus

Solar Oven

Mud walls form an indoor-outdoor space

Waste water is contained and recycled anaerobically for irrigation

I had the great good fortune to be invited to the home of a husband-and-wife team of architects in India. They are experts in re-use of materials, and their entire home is dedicated to recycling materials and using materials drawn from the land around them. I wish I were a better photographer; this home was stunning and downtright luxurious.

More and better photos are here. (Hat tip to Steven Rudolph, director of education at the Jiva Institute in Faridabad.

 

Unfired Brick

Here’s a closeup of some unfired brick I saw on a building in India, at the Dabchick Tourism Center, a rest stop on the highway between Delhi and Agra. Unfired brick is strong enough to hold up a commercial structure, and is environmentally sound because it is more like adobe than like brick, and it uses no mortar between the joints.

I thought it was rather noteworthy that India, which is full of pollution of all kinds, tries so hard to be green. All the Delhi taxis and buses run on compressed natural gas, and the government is using unfired brick in hits buildings, but the roadsides are full of litter. A country of mysterious contrasts.

 

Revolt Against CFLs Brewing in Britain?

No sooner do I get out of the US than I find out things are not so positive towards recycling and reducing carbon emissions in the UK. Although switching will save each consumer about $15 a year and save tons of carbon dioxide emissions, it’s not as simple as when WalMart vowed to switch its customers to CFLs within a short time period, and proceeded to empty its shelves of incandescent bulbs (well, they are relatively empty).

In fact, CFLS have become so controversial that readers of the London Daily Mail are being offered five free 100W incandescent bulbs each by the newspaper ahead of an EU ban on the bulbs that has already practically caused them to vanish from local stores. People who can’t or wont use CFLs are buying hundreds of 100w bulbs at a time, stockpiling them against the time when they will no longer be sold. The 150W bulb aleady vanished from the UK last year, and the 60w bulb is set to go away next year.

The Daily Mail has secured a special supply of the bulbs, which its readers can obtain free by reading the paper and clipping a daily token. After the paper has printed twelve tokens, readers mail them in and they’re exchanged for five bulbs. What a desperate marketing ploy!

The reason for this amazing show of resistance is that low energy bulbs are incompatible with millions of lamps and sockets in the UK, a fact that only emerged yesterday, when lighting experts said that many of the bulkier fluorescent lights were too big for the sockets of standard table and floor lamps, and also didn’t fit into many ceiling sockets. They also don’t work with dimmer switches.

There has also been pressure in the UK to wait a few years to ban incandescent bulbs until white LED bulbs, which emit a brighter light, are ready for the market.