Morihei Ueshiba"A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind."
Military spearheads clean-energy drive
PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, Md. — With the Navy’s Blue Angels and their F/A-18 Hornets arrayed in a neat line behind him, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that they would perform in the Labor Day Air Expo using a 50-50 mix of a plant-based biofuel and conventional fuel.
“It’s part of our process to move to alternative energy all across the Navy,” Mabus told reporters gathered on the sun-baked runway before him on Sept. 1. “The main reason we’re moving toward alternative fuels in the Navy and the Marine Corps is to make us better war fighters.”
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LEED 2012: The USGBC Adds Teeth, Real-Time Reporting To Its Green Building Ratings
Responding to criticisms that its ratings can be meaningless and easily gamed, the USGBC is introducing new rules so buildings must continually recertify and measure their energy use against their neighbors.
If you’re paying attention, you no doubt have seen the plaques placed near the doors of major new commercial buildings, announcing an impressive LEED rating. For building owners, in this real estate cycle and all those that will follow it, a good LEED rating shows that you're thinking about the planet. And for renters, it shows that your landlord is working to reduce costs and make the workplace more healthy. Everyone wins. But what does your skyscraper’s gold or platinum LEED rating really mean?
While LEED ratings have increased in public consciousness (with 1.5 million 6.8 billion square feet of commercial space certified since 2000), there has been way too little transparency about how new buildings with high LEED scores actually perform. So, while the marketing excitement of a platinum rating may score some points, it can hit a dead end under scrutiny. Some engineers, for instance, complained that LEED points were too easy to rack up in an incoherent building: Many cited the fact that a bike rack earned points in a building that might have a faulty boiler. And landlords faced no penalty if they declined make improvements or even use the technology they installed once given a rating by LEED. At its weakest, a LEED certification amounted to a one-time endorsement of a building’s design, with no follow-up.
Now, though, the system is changing--from within--to better reflect how LEED buildings actually save energy and water and how they can improve.
The nonprofit United States Green Building Council (USGBC), which administers LEED, says its volunteer members want to think of green buildings as assets rather than as checkoffs. The latest version of the building-rating system, called LEED 2012--which will launch in November and the go to USGBC members for a vote in November next summer--takes advantage of new technology and building practices that make real-time energy and water management commercially viable. Sharing this data so that other commercial real estate owners can compare their energy use is now going to be required. “Our goal is to show that real leaders share data,” says Scot Horst, USGBC’s Senior VP for LEED. LEED 2012 will also require owners to recertify every five years. So if you invest in a LEED rating when you open, you’ll have to prove over time that you’re staying current with available energy-saving techniques.
To get all the data from buildings ready for public consumption, the USGBC is inviting software developers to make that data legible. Horst showed Fast Company a preview of LEED 2012 in the Council’s airy headquarters in the heart of Washington, D.C. Using a database called the Green Building Information Gateway, the software allows an owner to tap into comparable data from similar buildings.
“I think of it like the Zagat rating,” says Horst. “Everyone will see the [LEED] plaque, but customers will go to the building with the current year on the plaque.” Presumably a “LEED 2011” plaque will look as cutting-edge in 2017 as a bike rack looks now.
LEED scores actually come from many separate tests, though the general public tends to pay attention only to the LEED-New Construction exam. For landlords who have earned certification under LEED for Existing Buildings’ Operations and Maintenance (or “ee-bomb”), these reporting requirements are not so new. Indeed, Horst says, LEED has certified more existing buildings than new ones--though new ones tend to draw both hype and suspicion.
For every other kind of landlord, the new rules create a stiff marketing challenge. Horst readily acknowledges that some owners have gotten used to patching together credits in order to lure tenants (the bike rack problem) but he argues that the market has evolved too far for this to continue. “Now the LEED rating is the beginning of a relationship,” says Horst, before offering an analogy: “If I leave the church [after getting married] and then I’m a pain in the ass, my wife is not going to stay with me.” Likewise, he hopes, tenants in the current marketplace will not stay with a landlord who can’t keep up with best practices in energy management.
Using LEED 2012, owners can keep an eye on performance with new apps available on LEED Online. It’s not clear that a full dashboard will be ready when the program launches next year, but the stockpile of apps will make actual performance--rather than just the components--easier to compare. (One potential app for sale maps energy-sucking boilers near the end of their useful lives.) “Faster, cheaper, more automatic” is LEED’s mantra for its new system, which is now open for a second wave of public comment. Software vendors would post the apps in exchange for the right to sell beefed-up versions of these tools to building owners.
According to Horst, more than 30 companies are developing tools with USGBC to help owners track and fix buildings’ performance. Some silently monitor equipment such as boilers to pinpoint areas of failure. Others consolidate information from different parts of a building.
“The apps area will be a place where you can see what the market is doing about LEED,” says Horst. “Some may tell a story about LEED, some may connect to LEED. The idea is that each LEED point creates an opportunity for automation, whether it’s in tracking your waste or something else.”
The timing of LEED 2012 is intelligent--New York and San Francisco are starting to mandate retrofits of older buildings, and tuning them up is a lot more cost-effective than wrecking them. While some skeptics might smell an attempt to brush back upstart systems like the more stringent (and so far, all but impossible to meet) Living Building Challenge, USGBC executives say the new focus on performance data matches how forward-thinking landlords are using LEED. “A great deal of what’s happening in green building comes from our own projects,” says Chris Pyke, USGBC’s verbally adept VP of research. “The goal of getting the data online is to enable owners to compete with each other.”
Pyke imagines an energy manager trying to make the case for investment in electric meters to her executive committee. “When they ask: ‘What’s the return on investment of that meter?’ Umm… a meter doesn’t have a return on investment! The things you do with that meter do.” Those things include turning lights off when you leave a room, using shared controls for A/C, and other rules that are less photogenic than (to use Pyke’s examples) “a solar hot water heater or a light bulb.”
The booming energy-services industry, led by huge companies that manage customers’ whole unruly mix of boilers and A/Cs and overhead lights for a fee, is predictably cheering on the change. Jeff Drees, U.S. president for $27 billion Schneider Electric, says he hopes landlords will now get LEED credit for syncing choices about design, fuel, operations, and maintenance into a single online dashboard. “No longer does a bike rack get credit over an integrated process,” says Drees.
The promise of new software tools means a new metric for how real estate owners price and trade their assets. This will only fly if real estate owners resign themselves to disclosure--which is perhaps why Horst talks so urgently about making data-gathering fast and automatic wherever possible.
Of course, when the government made managers of stocks and bonds disclose performance, the managers came up with zippy ways of hiding the facts. Why should landlords be any more forthcoming?
Pyke argues that landlords will see energy-performance disclosure as a way to create value. “The average [building owner] is still sitting there with spreadsheets and utility bills, maybe getting automated bills and exporting them into Excel,” he says. “There is a huge market for automation partners and I hope that we don’t know who those are yet.”
A database with real building performance, searchable and scalable, can make for frothy competition among secretive landlords. Can it also make for smarter energy management? Horst is careful not to predict the performance criteria for recertification before the comment period ends-perhaps because he wants to make sure to pick ones that tie to visible financial benefits.
“It’s very early days,” Horst says. “The idea is that over time there will be a number of applications and activities that we could never do ourselves.”
[Images, from top: The Taipei 101, a LEED Platiunum building, by Flickr user daymin. A screenshot from LEED2012's monitoring software, via the USGBC. The Bank of America tower, a LEED Platinum building, by Flickr user Bosc d'Anjou. A LEED Platinum plaque, by Flickr user tombdmot]
Strong, light blades a boost for wind energy?
Future of Tech: Bigger is better … when it's also lighter and stronger, goes the thinking of engineers and materials scientists designing the next generation of blades to wring energy from the wind.
GE Applying MRI Magnet Technology to Cost-Effectively Scale-Up to 15MW Wind Turbines
NISKAYUNA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE scientists began work on Phase 1 of a 2 yr., $3M project from the U.S. DOE to develop a next generation wind turbine generator that could support large-scale wind applications in the 10-15MW range.
UPS Adds 100 All-Electric Vehicles
UPS added 100 all-electric delivery vehicles for deployment in California, bolstering its fleet of more than 2,200 alternative fuel vehicles...
View Entire Story » | 0 CommentsMilitary Fuel Cell Market to Reach $1.2 Billion by 2017, According to Pike Research
BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Military agencies around the world, and particularly the U.S. Department of Defense, are increasingly turning to fuel cells as an attractive option for stationary, transport, and portable power.
Energy Harvesting Market to Hit $4.4 Billion by 2021 : companiesandmarkets.com
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The value of the energy harvesting industry will be $0.7Bn in 2011, with several hundred developers involved throughout the value chain, according to a new report available on companiesandmarkets.com.
Sun has come up on solar power, Utah homeowner says
Sun has come up on solar power, Utah homeowner says
The Salt Lake TribunePublished Jul 30, 2011 09:04PM MDT
Copyright 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
USPS Reports $400 Million in Energy Savings
The U.S. Postal Service says it saved more than $400 million in energy costs from 2007 to this year by streamlining...
View Entire Story » | 0 CommentsElectric cars about to cost more in California
The state has run out of the $5,000 rebates it was giving drivers who bought all-electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Roadster. Also, prices for the Nissan Leaf are going up.
It's going to cost more to buy electric cars in California.
Quest for renewable power turns back to water
share: diggfacebooktwitter NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The powerful flow of the Mississippi River, which brought destruction to scores living near its flooded banks this spring, is viewed by a new generation of energy entrepreneurs as a reliable alternative way to generate electricity. "If we're going to control the cost of converting to new forms of energy, hydro has to be part of that equation," said Jon Guidroz, project development director for Boston-based Free Flow Power, which wants to generate energy from the Mississippi River. "Water speeds vary and, years ago, generators weren't built and developed for variable speed," said Brent Ballard, chief executive of Olney, Texas-based Gulfstream Technologies. [...] developers are faced with many challenges, such as the current low prices for electricity that have bedeviled other alternative energy forms and a technology that is still in its infancy. Alaska Power & Telephone Co., which provides electricity to 33 communities with populations of 60 to 3,000, hopes the technology can reduce the use of room-sized diesel generators that still account for 30 percent of the power it provides. Marine services company McGinnis Inc. thought its proximity to the Ohio River was a natural reason to get into hydrokinetic generation. [...] the South Point, Ohio-based company found small-scale generation wasn't economically feasible and a larger operation required development costs that were too high, said its legal counsel Doug Ruschman. Douglas Meffert, executive director of Tulane University's RiverSphere, a planned hydrokinetic testing facility along the Mississippi River in New Orleans, said the technology will need federal support for commercial development.
View Entire Story » | 0 CommentsMore Than 5,200 Hydrogen Fueling Stations to Be Operational by 2020, According to Pike Research
BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A new Pike Research report forecasts that annual investment in hydrogen fueling stations will reach $1.6 billion by 2020, with a cumulative investment totaling $8.4 billion by that time.
Lend Lease and SolarCity to Install Solar to Help Provide Power to More Than 2,000 Homes
HONOLULU--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lend Lease and SolarCity to Install Solar to Help Provide Power to More Than 2,000 Homes; Hickam Communities at Hickam Air Force Base to Become One of the Largest Solar Installations in Hawai'i
First Solar Wins Loan Help
The U.S. Energy Department said it is offering to guarantee about $4.5 billion in loans for First Solar to finance three renewable energy projects in California that the solar-panel maker is developing.
‘Clean-fuel’ cars to get high-tech toll stickers
‘Clean-fuel’ cars to get high-tech toll stickers
The Salt Lake TribunePublished Jun 30, 2011 06:07PM MDT
Copyright 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Cleaner Greener Lincoln uses federal stimulus money for many projects
Contrary to popular belief, it's buildings, not cars, that are the biggest energy users. That's why Lincoln's broad sustainability program -- Cleaner Greener Lincoln -- focuses on buildings, says Milo
Recycling: A Win-Win for Trade, Environment
Recycling paper, plastics and scrap metal is good not only for the environment but also for reducing the U.S. foreign...
View Entire Story » | 0 CommentsClean Energy Business Models are in the Midst of a Transformation, According to Pike Research
BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the clean energy industry matures and as it simultaneously comes to grips with economic challenges, market leaders are experimenting with new business models, according to a new white paper.
Why Dow Is Burning Plastic For Energy
Plastic doesn't have to end up in landfills or the ocean. It can be converted into energy (it's made of oil, after all). But do the risks outweigh the benefits?
The U.S. has a dismal record at recycling used plastics: Scarcely 7% get a shot at a second life. But the plastics industry is starting to rally behind a new option for dealing with plastic waste: burning it for energy.
Dow Chemical--the country’s largest producer of polyethylene--this week announced a successful test project in which it burned 578 pounds of the filmy plastic scrap to generate energy. Dow was able to extract nearly all the energy embedded in the material, showing that used plastic can be used to create heat or electricity, according to Jeff Wooster, plastics sustainability leader for Dow’s North American Plastics business. It also demonstrated a feasible way of dealing with hard-to-recycle plastics, like the lightweight films used in packaging. "We were looking for a way to make use of the material so it doesn’t just end up in landfills," explained Wooster.
It’s not surprising that plastics can be a source of heat or electricity; they are, after all, originally derived from natural gas or oil. Many types of plastic burn hotter than wood or coal, making them fantastic fodder for energy.
Still, incinerating plastics has long been controversial. Proponents of waste to energy technology say today’s plants are cleaner and safer than incinerators of the past. Arrays of scrubbers and filters capture dangerous chemicals--hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, furans and heavy metals--as well as small particulates. The plants are said to produce less dioxin than is released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues.
But even those small amounts of dioxin worry environmentalists, who point out that the plants also produce a lot of residual ash. Critics also argue that waste-to-energy facilities are so expensive to build that they end up undercutting traditional recycling programs. The need to keep the plants going acts as an incentive to keep producing, rather than reducing waste, explains Brenda Platt, of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Washington, D.C.: "You have to keep feeding the beast." She calls the plants "wasted energy."
In places short on landfill space, like Europe or Japan, such environmental concerns carry little weight. Waste-to-energy plants are a mainstay of garbage disposal in Europe, as well as an important source of heat or electricity. About 400 plants are scattered across the continent, and together they take care of about 30% of the plastics Europe diverts from landfill. Even famously environmental countries have embraced the strategy. The Netherlands, for instance, landfills only 3% of its trash, and burns 35% for energy.
In the U.S., there are only 87 waste-to-energy facilities, most on the congested East Coast, and no new ones have been built since the mid-1990s. But Dow and other makers of raw plastics are hoping to bring an end to that informal moratorium, putting forth waste-to-energy as a solution to the eco-angst that has fueled calls for bans on plastic bags, take-out containers, and other packaging.
The American Chemistry Council has recently been touting the technology as both a renewable energy source and a form of recycling. (The European Union also counts it as recycling, which is one reason that countries like the Netherlands boast 90%-plus recycling rates.) To bolster its case, the ACC just released studies reporting that waste-to-energy plants in four communities were using significant amounts of unrecycled plastics, and that the programs complemented existing recycling efforts. Recapturing waste plastic would help to create a "reliable source of alternative energy from an abundant, no-cost feedstock" while diverting potentially valuable material from landfills, the ACC concluded.
Whether such arguments gain more traction in today’s political landscape remains to be seen. But stay tuned for a lively debate.
[Image by Flickr user Currybet]
Susan Freinkel is the author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story and American Chestnut: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. A San Francisco writer, her work has appeared in Discover, Smithsonian, the New York Times, Reader's Digest and other national publications.
Small cars sales, spurred by higher gasoline prices, lift US auto sales in April
DETROIT — Small cars sold briskly in the U.S. last month, as gasoline prices approached $4 a gallon and some buyers worried about shortages of Japanese-made vehicles.
Analysts expected overall industry sales in the U.S. to increase 19 percent from April of last year.
Sales last month were led by highly fuel-efficient models such as Chevrolet’s Cruze, Hyundai’s Elantra and Ford’s Focus
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First Offshore Wind Farm In The U.S. Gets Approval After Decade Of Red Tape
After a decade of dealing with environmental and regulatory red tape, the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. received final approval this week to start construction. The $1 billion, 110-turbine, 468-megawatt Cape Wind project now has all the federal permits required to begin building in Massachusetts's Nantucket Bay this coming fall. For anyone wondering why it took a decade for this seemingly innocent project to wriggle through regulatory hell, we've provided a handy condensed timeline below. Hint: it's not so innocent.
December 2001: Cape Wind Associates stage a public hearing with the Cape Cod Commission and public officials to present its project. During the next month, the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and the local Barnstable Town Council announce opposition to the wind farm, which could destroy views of Nantucket Sound and disturb wildlife.
December 2002: : Massachusetts representative William Delahunt calls for Nantucket Sound to be declared a national marine sanctuary. The next month, Clean Water Action, Greenpeace U.S, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Natural Resources Defense Council declare support for Cape Wind. Battle lines are being drawn.
November 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers release a report in favor of the wind farm, triggering a 60-day debate and four public hearings.
February 2005: The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound unleashes an 800-page report criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers's environmental review. The EPA calls for more research on how Cape Wind will affect wildlife. In March, the U.S. Interior Department joins the EPA in ganging up on Cape Wind. The never-ending debate continues.
August 2005: New laws turn over the jurisdiction of offshore renewables from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Minerals Management Service. The agency says it will do its own environmental review (we all know how "environmental reviews" went at that meth-filled, porny agency).
April 2006: Nantucket voters nix Cape Wind in a non-binding referendum.
October 2007: The Cape Cod Commission, the local land-use planning and regulatory agency, reject the Cape Wind proposal on "procedural grounds." More red tape.
January 2009: The Minerals Management Service environmental report finds almost no problems with Cape Wind. In February, the FAA releases a finding that Cape Wind could be hazardous to U.S. air travel because of radar interference.
October 2009: The Cape Cod Commission denies Cape Wind permission to build buried transmission lines. The Commission is soon overruled by the state. This same month, two Native American tribes push for the Nantucket Sound to be on the National Register of Historic Places.
August 2009: Senator Ted Kennedy, a powerful opponent of the project, dies. While never stated as a reason for his opposition, Cape Wind would have effect the views from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
April 2010: The U.S. government ultimately rejects the Native American claims (surprise!), and Ken Salazar approves Cape Wind. In October 2010, Salazar signs a 28-year lease for the wind farm.
November 2010: Massachusetts regulators approve an agreement to buy half of all electricity produced by Cape Wind. The wind farm still doesn't have a buyer today for the other half of its power.
This brings us to today. Cape Wind has all of the federal permits it needs, but opponents are still making threats ("They are attempting to declare victory in a war that is far from over," said an irate Audra Parker of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in an interview with the Boston Globe). There are still 11 pending lawsuits against the project, so if it wants to get it built, Cape Wind Associates had better get started on sneaking it in before some other regulatory hurdle appears.
Cape Wind's plight does not bode well for future offshore wind developments, which could, according to the DOE, provide 20% of the country's electricity needs. That percentage doesn't take into account the environmental and technical issues, which are considerable. If Cape Wind has taught us anything, it is to not underestimate the power of people who don't want their pristine landscapes soiled by turbines. America provides a lot of recourse for people who are angry (especially when some of the angry people are elected officials). Ultimately, wind energy will probably have more success on land in remote areas of the country, rather than off the coast of incredibly popular beaches. That 20% projection is unlikely, to say the least.
Image, via Cape Wind. Those are the tiny turbines, six miles off the coast.
Reach Ariel Schwartz via Twitter or email.
Is your building green? We’ll all know soon
The District imposed some of the nation’s toughest standards for green construction in 2006, many of them to take effect in 2012.
“Net-Zero Energy Buildings and Homes” White Paper Heralds “Next Frontier” in Green Building
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--“Zero and Net-zero Energy Buildings + Homes,” a 64-page White Paper that proclaims “the next frontier in the green building movement,” is available online from Building Design+Construction (www.BDCnetwork.com). The 40,000-word report from Building Design+Construction, a professional publication serving the $350 billion commercial building sector, provides a road map for the U.S./Canadian design, construction, and real estate industry to develop “net-zero
Solar Power Purchase Agreement Saves Broomfield, Colorado Taxpayers $450,000
BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With zero up-front cost, the city of Broomfield, Colorado will save an estimated $450,000 over the next 20 years thanks to a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Lighthouse Finance. The arrangement is a promising glimpse into a new energy economy: cheaper electricity for building owners, profitability for investors, and clean, local energy production. “The big story is that the city paid nothing to get all the advantages of solar power,” explains Geoff Manchester,
U.S. Wind Industry Continues Growth, Despite Slow Economy and Unpredictable Policies
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--American Wind Energy Association Annual Market Report underscores wind’s affordability as domestic generation source, reports industry grew by 15%.