Green – Page 3 – CleanSpeak

SAGE’s re-imagining of windows will help save $300 billion in energy

This morning Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu – joined by Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar – announced $100+ million in DOE funding and IRS green manufacturing tax credits for our client SAGE Electrochromics.

These funds will help SAGE establish a new 250,000 sq. ft. facility in Faribault, Minnesota used to manufacture energy-saving, electronically tintable dynamic glass that makes buildings more energy efficient and creates hundreds of new, skilled, green manufacturing jobs.

While hundreds of buildings have already installed SageGlass windows, this new government funding will enable the company to mass produce its glass and bring this energy saving technology to the world.

Secretary Chu has repeatedly said the biggest gains in decreasing this country’s energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide and our dependency on foreign oil will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. SageGlass is a leading example of an energy efficiency technology.

SageGlass products transform windows from an energy liability to an energy source. The potential for energy savings is significant because energy loss through windows accounts for about 30% of heating and cooling energy. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), electrochromic windows like those produced by SAGE can save one-eighth of all the energy used by U.S. buildings each year. This is equivalent to about 5% of the nation’s energy budget. This translates into savings of approximately $300 billion over the next 20 years.

That’s not chump change.

SAGE focused on something each of us experiences every day – glass – and re-imagined it, transforming glass into something innovative that helps make the world a better place and America more competitive.

This is a great example of how something seemingly mundane like a window can become highly transformational.

Hummer: a beast of a brand

Branding is tricky business.

It’s not enough to crisply differentiate a product, provide stellar service and reinforce your customers’ delusions of grandeur. The whims of the market might still bring you down.

That’s what’s happened with the Hummer. Say what you want about the make, now being euthanized by GM, but you can’t deny the brand’s potency. Huge. Tough. Dangerous. Cavalier. I am a force. Reckon with my a**.

The problem was, the brand couldn’t contain its own machismo. Like a downhill ski racer hurtling off the course, the machine’s daring was its downfall. Utterly and unapologetically ginormous, it came to stand for everything that’s wrong with our auto-addicted, fossil-fueling, high-beaming selves. As we used to chant on the playground, Hey! Hey! Get outta my way! I just got back from the USA!

Which reminds me, a buddy of mine rolled up on a sexy new BMC racing bicycle the other day. Beefy, squared-off tubes. Not to be messed with.

“Dude,” I said, “that baby is the Hummer of bikes.”

Like a good liberal, he blanched.

Oops, sorry, meant that as a compliment. He likes the bike because it’s Swiss.

Anyway, a pending deal to sell Hummer to a Chinese concern fell through this week, prompting GM to say it will begin the “orderly wind-down of the Hummer operations.” As with the other brand GM recently tried to retire, Saab, there’s a glimmer of hope. That would be of interest to the 3,000 people who make and sell Hummers in the US, including 950 who work at an already shrinking GM plant in Shreveport, La.

If the brand does collapse, you can’t blame it on the brand per se. Gas prices, recessionary times, heightened eco-consciousness and a more touchy-feely zeitgeist also played roles. But wait, that’s getting back to the brand, isn’t it?

After all, the Hummer isn’t the only vehicle that gets paltry mileage. In fact, the Hummer H3T at 16 mpg was green enough to get on the cash-for-clunkers trade-up list – not as a clunker but as an approved replacement. There’s a fair number of Audis and Beemers in that mileage range, and no one’s calling for their demise.

So maybe the Hummer got a bad rap. Or maybe it didn’t. Either way, the Hummer is gone (nearly). In the elegiac words of the Bard of Big, Hummerpedia.org:

This is the end, my only Hummer friend, the end. Bad news for those who love the H make. Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.

It was a beast of a brand.

A new generation of products wraps stodgy concept of conservation in sexy new clothes

Not too long ago I described conservation and efficiency as the homely sisters in the sustainable energy world because there were no iconic products that symbolize efficiency the way wind farms and solar panels symbolize their respective industries. I was wrong. Epically wrong.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently published a list of companies that received grants to develop energy efficiency technologies. Many of these products are relatively boring, designed to toil away deep in the bowels of a power generation system, squeezing out delivering a few more watts here and a few more degrees there. Others, though, really capture the imagination. They show that energy efficiency doesn’t have to be a dud in the public eye. It can excite the popular imagination and communicate the message that using less energy is the single nicest thing you can do for the Earth until renewable energy usurps fossil fuels. And some of these efficiency products are, if you’ll grant some latitude on the use of the word, sexy.

Take Nanotrons, a division of Agiltron. Nanotron is working on a long-lasting reflective coating to improve on today’s short-lived coatings. Paint Nanotron’s coating on your building’s roof, then watch your cooling costs drop. Kazak Composites is developing building panels that retain heat and coolness, and “know” when to release them to keep room temperatures even. Lower air conditioning bills in a can? Smart sheetrock? Not bad.

Even the stuff that will work under the covers has a good cool quotient. Machflow Energy, for example, is using exotic gases like krypton and xenon in a heat pump that makes refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners run on less electricity and with no environmental damage. Considering that heating and cooling systems emit over a half billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the DOE, efficiency improvements make a huge difference to the environment. And you thought krypton was Superman’s home planet and xenon was the warrior princess’ brother.

Some products combine efficiency with one of the other marquee sustainable energy sources. Covalent Solar is developing coated glass that improves solar voltaic efficiency by concentrating solar energy on dense arrays of solar cells at the edges of the glass, reducing the overall number of cells needed to produce the same amount of power as a larger solar array. Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC., is working on a new way to produce hydrogen (fuel cells, anyone?) with less electricity than current production methods.

So back to the use of “sexy.” Maybe “interesting” or “fascinating” would have been more appropriate words to describe these up-and-coming efficiency technologies, but they lack the necessary sizzle. Energy efficiency needs to be in the public’s face – and not just the “earth first” set. They’re already invested. I’m talking rank-and-file consumers. The U.S. consumer market consists of more than 100 million households and generates about 17 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to EnergyStar.gov. As much as 30 percent of the energy used to power household heating, cooling and appliances is wasted. The European Union is ahead of the U.S. on the efficiency front. It has already set a goal of cutting its energy consumption 20 percent by 2020, and it knows it needs the mass audience’s buy-in to reach that goal. “To achieve this goal, it is working to mobilize public opinion, decision-makers and market operators and to set minimum energy efficiency standards and rules on labeling for products, services and infrastructure,” the European Energy Agency writes on its Web site. We’re not going to make worldwide societal changes that reduce energy consumption by talking like Mr. Spock. Efficiency needs an iconic product that combines a little Angelina Jolie sex appeal with some Steve Jobs salesmanship thrown in for good measure.

Urban farming sows seeds of hope in Detroit

What comes to mind when you think of Motor City? America’s proudest industry crushed? Twenty-seven percent unemployment? An exodus of more than half the populace?

How about a wasteland where you can buy a house for $15,000, if you dare live in it?

John Hantz sees all that but also envisions Detroit as the nation’s first urban farm. Acre after acre of sustainable agriculture could create jobs, attract tourists, yield the local produce consumers crave, and create scarcity of real estate to revive a moribund market.

“We need scarcity,” the wealthy stockbroker tells Fortune. “We can’t create opportunities, but we can create scarcity.”

An estimated 40 square miles of land lies abandoned in the 138-square-mile metropolis. The concept of farming it is drawing positive if cautious responses from various quarters. Says the American Institute of Architects, “Detroit is particularly well-suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.” Fortune includes favorable quotes from a Harvard urban planning professor and a former HUD official as well.

Hantz Farms envisions tomatoes and greens germinating in the spring and shoppers harvesting ripe produce for the table in the summer and fall. The investor is offering $30 million for a pilot and is asking for free tax-delinquent land and zoning changes that would lower taxes.

Hantz has his critics and skeletons, but the idea is wildly fresh. And given the city’s legacy – creating an industry that helps warm the planet then protecting that industry at all costs – what could be more carbon negative?

2009: Looking back at the year in environmental issues

The scribes at here at CleanSpeak central have written about everything from wind, to solar, to endangered natural landscapes, to endangered McMansions, to Christmas trees, to hybrid vehicles this year. We decided to take a look back and nominate our own slate of candidates for the Top 5 Environmental Stories of 2009.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It included $80 billion for green/sustainable initiatives like a smart power grid, renewable energy technology, home heating efficiency and green job training programs. If the American economy is going to be more sustainable, it’s going to take this kind of government leadership.
The Copenhagen Climate Conference. It didn’t accomplish much of substance, but all of the major players were in one place duking it out, which at least elevates the issue of climate change to a more prominent place in the public eye.
Boeing gets the 787 jet liner off the ground. The 787 Dreamliner, with a composite rather than aluminum skin, represents a future of more environmentally friendly air travel. With its more efficient engines and lightweight construction, the Dreamliner can make long hauls on less fuel than any of its forerunners or its ostensible competitor, the oversized Airbus A380.
More polar bears are going hungry. Polar bears might be to this generation what the canary in the coal mine was the previous generations. Scientists in 2009 announced that the number of under-nourished bears has tripled in the last 20 years. The culprit is warmer global temperatures that are shrinking the ice masses where the world’s largest land predator hunts for seals.
Chevrolet officially unveils the Volt. General Motors is staking a lot of its future on the plug-in hybrid, which is its long-delayed answer to hybrids from Toyota, Honda, Ford, and now Mercedes. That’s quite a turnaround for the company known for environmental nightmares like the Humvee, which gets about nine yards per gallon if it has a good tail wind.

There were, of course, innumerable other environmentally tinged stories this year. Any thoughts on what should have made the list? Let us know!

Cuttyhunk says ‘YIMBY’ to wind power

Unlike the new NIMBYs, selectmen in the town encompassing Massachusetts’ Cuttyhunk Island say they will support a wind farm off their shores, a position directly at odds with many of their neighbors to the immediate east on Martha’s Vineyard.

Residents seem to back the decision:

“I don’t think you can just say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ and expect that will be OK,’’ said resident Nina Brodeur. “If I had my preference, I’d choose not to see them. But I understand the needs of the state, and if it’s not in my backyard, it would have to be in somebody else’s. We can’t close our eyes and think we’re more special than anyone else.’’

At issue is Cape Wind, the embattled wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. Opponents say the landmark project will be a blight on the horizon and ruin a historic Native American site. The project also help Cuttyhunk residents, as part of Massachusetts’ poorest community, pay their utilities:

“I think the wind farm is a great idea,’’ said George Isabel, 59, who has lived on Cuttyhunk since 1968 and serves as police chief and harbor master. “People here can’t afford to turn on their air conditioners or electric heat. Something has to give, because it’s hard to survive. There could be big benefits for us.’’ (Source: Boston Globe)

Maine may be next for offshore wind. The state just announced three offshore wind test sites.

A couple other developments in the wind arena:

Endangered bat concerns stall another wind farm

A West Virginia judge just halted progress of an Appalachian ridgeline wind farm because the developer failed to account for endangered Indiana bats on the property. Developers don’t have to prove that no bats will die in the project, just that the damage – presumably from construction, displacement and/or turbine blades – is minimized. That means potentially years of surveying, planning and permits. Plaintiffs in the case said the project would kill 6,746 bats of all kinds annually. Source: New York Times.

Report: Turbines are annoying, perhaps, but not sickening

An expert panel issued a report this month questioning the validity of wind-turbine syndrome, the constellation of symptoms – including sleep problems, headaches, dizziness, anxiety, ringing in the ears – sometimes associated with turbine noise.

“There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects,” says the report, prepared by a multidisciplinary panel of medical doctors, audiologists, and acoustical professionals for the American and Canadian wind energy industry associations. The 85-page document does admit that turbine noise can be annoying.

“An annoyance factor to wind turbine sounds undoubtedly exists, to which there is a great deal of individual variability. Stress has multiple causes and is additive. Associated stress from annoyance, exacerbated by the rhetoric, fears, and negative publicity generated by the wind turbine controversy, may contribute to the reported symptoms described by some people living near rural wind turbines.”

Source: Wind Energy

Real Christmas trees are okay

The verdict is in: It’s okay to have a real Christmas tree – yes, the kind you cut down.

That’s according to the National Christmas Tree Association and my informal Yammer, Facebook and Twitter poll on tree choice. The breakdown:

Real tree: 74 percent
Fake: 15 percent
No tree: 11 percent

Although the poll was about respondents’ outright choice, many commented on the sustainability considerations. Lest you think the survey too lightweight, know that some heavy hitters took part.

A prominent New England horticulturalist:

“Buying locally grown trees help keep farms/crops alive. I like to make ornaments that the birds can enjoy and put the tree outside my window after the holidays to extend its life.”

A forester for the U.S. government:

“If you buy from a local grower, you are helping to preserve open space – the loss of which is arguably one of our most pressing environmental concerns in the Northeast. The grower is making a modest profit (compared to growing condos).”

The NCTA asserts that artificial trees contain dangerous chemicals, are imported all the way from China, and consume natural resources of their own in their manufacture.

The joy of real

In addition to the green benefits, many poll respondents prize the tradition, the scent, and the sheer joy (especially for kids) of having a real Christmas tree. Several mentioned felling it themselves and recycling it afterwards. Approximately 25-30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. every year, according to the National Christmas Tree Association (more stats).

Four of the 27 respondents to my poll prefer manufactured trees, yet only one does it for environmental reasons.

“We don’t like cutting a fresh tree every year. We figure one batch of plastic re-used for 20 years beats 20 trees on the environmental scale.”

The American Christmas Tree Association, not to be confused with the aforementioned National Christmas Tree Association, agrees with this position, saying that over a 10-year span, the carbon footprint of one artificial tree is smaller than consuming 10 real ones. Moreover, it says, the PVC in artificial trees is safe enough for water pipes and plastic wrap.

For real-tree advocates, however, the Tannenbaum is the soul of Christmas, and it shouldn’t come from Wal-Mart. It’s one of the last vestiges of real in a holiday dominated by electronics, licensed characters, parking lot wars, Manheim Steamroller and pathological consumption. For them, a real tree promises a real Christmas. So it’s good to hear that real trees are at least green enough for people wanting to do right by the environment.

What kind of tree are you getting? Post a comment explaining why.

Solar in a bottle is the practical alternative for wind and sun poor states

Did you ever expect to find cutting-edge renewable energy technology in your grammar school lunch box? Right there, next to your PB&J and a slightly bruised apple most likely sat a thermos bottle of milk or soup. That bottle worked on the same basic principle as solar thermal technology, the most practical renewable energy source for regions without the right weather to support today’s marquee renewables – wind power and solar photovoltaic. Which would be much of the continental U.S.

Unlike photovoltaic and wind systems, solar thermal systems can store energy for use at night or on cloudy, windless days. Photo thermal systems are like huge thermos bottles that use sunlight to super-heat highly concentrated salt solutions. Insulated “bottles” trap the heat. When the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, the trapped heat can generate steam to produce electricity or heat water to warm homes and businesses. Spain is starting work on a large-scale solar thermal plant for its Seville province in 2010.

Regions like New England, the Mid Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest could go Spain one better by combining solar thermal, wind and photovoltaic in one super-renewable energy system. We here in New England get wind, but not the steady, predicable wind that makes the Great Plains states ideal for wind power. We get sun, but not enough for large-scale solar, like the Southwest. So here’s an idea for the renewable-poor states. Build wind turbine farms for when the wind blows. Build photovoltaic arrays for when the sun shines. But don’t hook them up directly to the grid, use them to generate and store heat in solar thermal systems to match energy production with energy demand. What do you think? Practical, or a crackpot idea?

Meet the new NIMBYs

All good people support renewable energy, right?

It depends.

As the country gets serious about solar, wind and other renewables, and the government steps in with subsidies, parties that traditionally fell in line on eco issues are increasingly squaring off.

The Nature Conservancy, for example, describes how a 7,900-acre wind farm in Kansas brought in 20 miles of roads, 100 towers, transmission lines and a substation, threatening habitats for endangered birds and devouring a big chunk of the country’s disappearing prairie. The organization warns that new energy development will occupy nearly 80,000 square miles of land by 2030 – larger than Minnesota. One state director’s job is seen as mostly “reforming wind power.”

Rural Nevada got a shocker when it learned that two large solar farms, in addition to creating hundreds of jobs, would need 1.3 billion gallons of water per year, or about 20 percent of the desert valley’s supply (via New York Times).

Water plays a huge, underpublicized role in solar and many other forms of energy production, prompting one analyst to introduce an ominous new eco buzzword: “water footprint.”

Water plays a different role in Cape Wind off Massachusetts, potentially the country’s first offshore wind farm, which last week was threatened by a move to place Nantucket Sound on the National Register of Historic Places. “The identity and culture of the indigenous Wampanoag (Native Americans) are inextricably linked to Nantucket Sound,” according to a Massachusetts Historical Commission opinion.

CNET sums it all up perfectly, saying, a “new breed of NIMBY (not in my backyard) is emerging: opponents of wind or solar installations who generally support renewable energy, just as long as they are built somewhere else.”

Geothermal heat gets real

I love renewable energy stories. We know that if we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, we can reduce global warming, our utility bills and, one hopes, our military presence in the Middle East.

But renewable energy stories frequently disappoint. What starts out like a success story turns out to be merely a hint at renewable energy’s potential. Too often, the project isn’t quite there yet. It’s merely proposed, or it’s in the demonstration stage, or it’s underwritten by a one-of-a-kind grant, or it’s only a tiny improvement on traditional methods.

That’s why I’m delighted to hear that a local developer has invested in geothermal to heat and cool a four-unit residential condominium now on the market. According to the local paper, the holes have been dug, the pipes have been laid, and the condos are more than 90 percent complete. It looks like a rare marriage of renewable energy and the free market: private money going into a private project (with any tax credits going to the eventual homeowners).

So while the success story isn’t complete, it’s real. Explaining his rationale for the project, developer Steve Kelm said the owners will never have to worry about rate shock of fluctuating heating oil prices: “I’d rather be ahead of the curve.”

The payback on a project like this is about five years, estimates Andy Livingston, chairman and CEO of American Ecothermal Inc., also of Portsmouth, which installed the geothermal “wells.”

How does geothermal heating and cooling work?
Geothermal uses heat from the earth’s core and sun-baked surface to heat homes in the winter and cool them in the summer. You need a geothermal heat pump (GHP), which circulates a carrier fluid through underground pipes. In the winter, the heat pump uses electricity to extract heat from the ground-warmed fluid, sending re-chilled fluid back through the ground to pick up more heat. And the cycle continues. The principle is similar to an air conditioner or refrigerator. This approach is 48 percent more efficient than the best gas furnaces and more than 75 percent more efficient than oil furnaces, according to the EPA.

To cool a home in the summer months, switch the direction of the heat flow, and the same system can extract heat from the air, thereby cooling it.

What are the benefits?
Geothermal heating and cooling offer a potential large reduction in energy use, peak demand and utility bills. Aggressive deployment of GHPs could nearly halve the need for net new electricity capacity needed by 2030, according to a U.S. Department of Energy study. It could reduce electricity bills by as much as $38 billion.

More stats from the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium, the non-profit trade association for the GHP industry:

Operating 100,000 geothermal heat pump units over 20 years would be the greenhouse gas/carbon reduction equivalent of taking 58,700 cars off the road or planting 120,000 acres of trees.
Owners can expect savings of 30 to 70 percent in heating mode and 20 to 50 percent in cooling mode compared with conventional systems.
GHPs reduce energy consumption and corresponding emissions by 40 to 70 percent over traditional heating methods (e.g., furnaces).

And there are concrete tax incentives. The IRS is offering tax credits for 30 percent of the spending on geothermal heat pump equipment, including labor. Installing a $12,000 geothermal heat pump system would give you a $3,600 credit.

Geothermal in the works
We’re just getting started with geothermal heating and cooling. The United states has more than 600,000 GHP units, the largest installed base in the world, but many European companies are ahead on a per capita basis, according to the DOE.

A Reno casino, the Peppermill Resort Spa, has tapped an underground aquifer holding 170-degree water to heat a 17-story hotel tower, including restaurants, 1,600 rooms, and the water for the sinks and showers. Owners are predicting $1 million in a year in savings with an eight-year payback.

An Iowa town is using part of a $1 million community development grant to create a shared geothermal heating and cooling system for the downtown.

Some homeowners are designing homes that combine geothermal with passive solar and knock $1,000 off their utility bills. This geothermal/solar design involves solid wood walls, an airflow envelope just inside the walls, and lots of windows on the southern exposure.

Meanwhile, there’s an entire separate industry using geothermal to produce electricity. That’s for another post, but one exciting possibility is in oil production. Oil extraction is accompanied by non-petroleum hot fluids that can help power field equipment. “With an estimated 10 barrels of hot water produced along with each barrel of oil in the United states, there is significant resource potential for this technology,” says the US DOE.

Bring it on. It’s time for more success stories.