Green industries will enjoy 'explosive' decade

From the LA Times: What a difference a decade makes. Once shunned as an industry only a tree-hugger could love, clean-tech has blossomed into an economic heavyweight, according to a report from research firm Clean Edge Inc. (click to download the report)

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LA colleges lose millions in flawed green plans

From the LA Times: Larry Eisenberg had a vision. "Amazing," he called it. "Spectacular." The Los Angeles Community College District would become a paragon of clean energy. By generating solar, wind and geothermal power, the district would supply all its electricity needs. Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront.

As head of a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the college campuses, Eisenberg commanded attention. But his plan for energy independence was seriously flawed.

He overestimated how much power the colleges could generate. He underestimated the cost. And he poured millions of dollars into designs for projects that proved so impractical or unpopular they were never built.

These and other blunders cost nearly $10 million that could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities, a Times investigation found.

The problems with Eisenberg's energy vision were fundamental. For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.

Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.

Weather and geology also refused to cooperate.

Three solar power arrays had to be scrapped because the intended locations were atop seismic faults.

Plans for large-scale wind power collided with the reality that prevailing winds at nearly all the campuses are too weak to generate much electricity. To date, a single wind turbine has been installed, as a demonstration project. It spins too slowly in average winds to power a 60-watt light bulb.

In the end, Eisenberg's grand plan was scaled down to what was actually doable, which was a fraction of the green energy capacity he had envisioned.

By then, the district had committed at least $4 million to designs for solar and wind energy farms that would never get beyond blueprints.

As one project after another was scratched, an elaborate plan to pay for it all with money from private investors fell apart. But the investment banks that put the deals together had to be paid for their work. The cost: $2.8 million.

At Southwest College, the district spent an additional $1.2 million on a parking lot shaded by solar panels, only to abandon the project with the work half done.

At Valley College, one of the solar arrays that was actually built sat idle for 14 months, thanks to a dispute between a contractor and the district over who was supposed to arrange a hookup to the power grid. The delay cost $1.5 million in potential energy savings, according to the college.

Eisenberg, the district's executive director of facilities planning and development, conceded some mistakes but voiced no regrets. He cast himself as an environmental visionary and predicted that the college system would eventually achieve energy independence. "Somebody needs to be first," he said. "If the great explorers really had a map and knew where they were going, maybe we wouldn't have the result we have today."

Unyielding enthusiasm

Eisenberg, now 59, grew up in Sun Valley, the son of a TV repairman and a secretary for the probation department. He was student body president of North Hollywood High School and became the first member of his family to attend college. He earned a bachelor's degree in urban studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's in public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

After a succession of jobs managing public buildings in Wisconsin, Eisenberg was hired in 1993 as facilities chief for Washington County, Ore., which encompasses suburbs of Portland.

In 1995, he and his wife, Christine, filed for personal bankruptcy, listing assets of $236,000 and liabilities of $262,000. Most of the debt, aside from their home loan, was to credit-card companies; they also owed $21,000 in back taxes. The bankruptcy case was closed after the couple completed a payment plan in 1999.

Eisenberg ran into difficulties at his job as well.

His boss, Bob Davis, "wanted to get rid of Larry because of mismanagement," Washington County Commissioner Andy Duyck said in an interview. Duyck said he did not know the reason for Davis' displeasure, and Davis, the county administrator, declined to comment.

Eisenberg recalled that Davis "let me know he was unhappy" with his job performance. He depicted it as a clash of management styles: Davis' was conservative, while his own was creative and entrepreneurial, Eisenberg said.

"I'm not risk-averse," Eisenberg said. "In retrospect, maybe they think they should have gotten rid of me sooner."

Eisenberg left the Oregon job in August 2003 to become head of facilities and new construction for the Los Angeles college district. He acknowledged that he had not told district officials about his bankruptcy. He said it had no bearing on his professional life.

Eisenberg was put in charge of the campus construction program, one of California's largest public works projects.

A mandate from the district's Board of Trustees to incorporate renewable power into new buildings offered him a chance to make his name as a leader in green construction.

He was tireless in promoting the program's eco-friendly aspects, traveling at taxpayer expense to Zurich, Switzerland, to speak at a conference of the International Sustainable Campus Network. He made similar presentations in New Orleans, Seattle and Atlanta.

His advocacy had a messianic tinge. In one e-mail to his advisors, he described his renewable-energy agenda as "what the world needs now. No one else is doing it. We can and will."

The trustees encouraged Eisenberg's push for green energy, even as his plan grew steadily more ambitious. They liked the idea of freeing the colleges from dependence on fossil fuels and were content to leave the practical details to him.

But Eisenberg's enthusiasm obscured an inconvenient reality: With the technology now available, the cost of renewable power exceeds that of energy derived from burning coal and natural gas.

Green energy advocates often argue that the added cost is justified by the reduction in pollution, particularly carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

Eisenberg talked up the environmental benefits of his plan. But he also insisted that it would cost less than continuing to rely on conventional sources of electricity. Private investors, he explained, would put up almost all the money in order to take advantage of tax breaks, and they would pass the savings on to the district.

In the end, he said, government subsidies would reduce the district's purchase and installation costs as much as 90%.

One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.

An engineering consultant put the cost far higher: $1.9 billion. That number caught the attention of Marshall Drummond, then chancellor of the college district. It was enough to pay for several dozen new classroom buildings. In December 2008, the chancellor summoned Eisenberg and his energy team to explain.

Drummond was unimpressed by what he heard. In an e-mail to college presidents, he complained about "missing components and what may be shaky assumptions." He called Eisenberg's plan "an unvalidated 'dream.'"

Drummond welcomed Eisenberg's push for solar power and his efforts to maximize energy efficiency in new buildings.

What concerned him were what he called "Martian technologies."

Eisenberg wanted to spend $98 million on hydrogen fuel-cell equipment that had never been put into commercial operation. He called for spending $59 million on untried hydrogen storage devices and $78 million on batteries. The idea was to stock up on solar power during the day and use it at night, a concept experts see as too costly to be viable with current technology.

Eisenberg also proposed $78 million in geothermal and wind projects — even though local weather patterns had led his own technical advisors to conclude that these plans made no sense.

In regions prone to extremes of hot and cold, pumping water through pipes hundreds of feet underground to heat or cool buildings with geothermal energy can produce big savings. But in Southern California's temperate climate, a geothermal system would not work well and the savings were unlikely to justify the cost, the advisors said.

Eisenberg's enthusiasm for wind energy also outran the facts. Among the projects he touted was the Windjet, a windmill that could be built in various sizes, including one as big as a Ferris wheel.

Its creator, a Manhattan Beach inventor named Brad Sorenson, called the Windjet the "highest efficiency wind power system in history." It existed only in miniature prototype, run in part with a bicycle chain. Sorensen hauled the contraption around in the trunk of his car.

Eisenberg wanted to put one on each of the nine campuses.

A district energy advisor, Andrew Hoffman, dismissed the Windjet as a fantasy, telling Eisenberg that Sorensen "claims he can extract more power from the wind than is theoretically possible.

"When dealing with issues on the human scale, the laws of Newtonian physics are non-negotiable," Hoffman wrote.

Undeterred, Eisenberg asked Sorensen how soon he could produce a Windjet for each college. "We need to proceed immediately with purchase and installation," Eisenberg told the inventor in an e-mail.

Nothing came of the proposal.

"I don't think it's really ready for the world," Sorensen said in an interview.

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Sol e sal: Siemens testa protótipo de central eléctrica em Portugal

Da Agência Lusa: A Siemens vai testar em Portugal, em parceria com a EDP Inovação e a Universidade de Évora, um protótipo de central solar termoelétrica que utiliza o sal fundido como meio de transferência de calor.

O protótipo foi hoje apresentado na primeira conferência anual da associação Energyin -- Pólo de Competitividade e Tecnologia da Energia, que está a decorrer em Viseu.

João Festas, responsável na Siemens pela área de negócios das energias renováveis e pelo acompanhamento de novas tecnologias da energia, explicou à agência Lusa que a tecnologia que existe atualmente "usa um óleo térmico para fazer o aproveitamento de calor do sol e depois usa sal fundido para fazer armazenamento de energia térmica".

O protótipo que vai ser testado em Évora "vai usar já o sal fundido a circular no campo solar para ser diretamente o sal fundido a obter a energia térmica do sol, evitando um meio de permutação de calor", acrescentou.

Segundo o responsável, a vantagem é que "o sal fundido permite aumentar muito a temperatura do sistema", uma vez que "o óleo térmico tinha uma limitação de 400 graus, porque depois vaporizava e a pressão criada destruía os sistemas do campo solar".

Ao conseguirem atingir-se "temperaturas mais altas com o sal, a eficiência do sistema subirá bastante e o preço da energia baixará", frisou.

O protótipo representa um investimento total de cerca de cinco milhões de euros, comparticipado pelo ministério do Ambiente alemão.

Segundo João Festas, será o primeiro a ser testado em Portugal e o segundo em todo o mundo, uma vez que a Siemens tem uma participação na empresa Archimede Solar Energy, que já tem um protótipo em Itália.

A Universidade de Évora começará em maio a terraplanar o terreno e, no mesmo mês, a EDP Inovação vai disponibilizar água, eletricidade e todas as utilidades necessárias.

"A partir de junho começaremos a entrar no terreno, com a construção civil das sapatas para receber depois os coletores solares. Pensamos que até dezembro a fase de construção estará terminada e depois seguir-se-ão três anos de experiências com o protótipo", avançou.

João Festas admitiu estar "com grandes expetativas", até porque será também possível "testar vários tipos de sal", uma vez que cada um tem o seu ponto de fusão "e permite evitar o congelamento do sistema a temperaturas mais baixas".

Em Évora será instalado "um 'loop', ou seja, um sistema de parabólicas e de espelhos que, todo seguido, permite obter as temperaturas adequadas à entrada e saída" do sistema.

"Vamos construir um 'loop' completo para poder testar as temperaturas de operação já como se fosse uma central comercial", explicou, acrescentando que terá cerca de 350 metros de comprimento.

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Green Living: Nokia is the greenest electronics company, Nintendo still environmentally unfriendly

While we’re still waiting for Greenpeace’s latest edition of its guide to greener electronics, let’s recap October 2010 edition.

Nokia ranked first among 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. All its current mobile phone models are PVC free and Nokia’s scheduled releases are on track to be free of brominated compounds, chlorinated flame retardants and antimony trioxide.

Sony Ericsson, Philips, HP, Samsung, and Motorola are also praised by Greenpeace for their efforts against toxic chemicals.

Apple is ranked #9 because of its lack of information about its management of chemicals and its supply chain communications. Apple also continues to score poorly for the minimal information it provides about its future toxic chemical phase-out plans.

Toshiba, Microsoft and Nintendo get a red flag. Toshiba, on #16, backtracked on its commitment to bring to market new models of all its consumer electronics products free of PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) by 1 April 2010, its own timeline for meeting this commitment. Greenpeace accuses the Japanese company of misleading its customers by not admitting that it would not meet its public commitment until the timeline for that commitment had passed. It has failed to provide a new timeline, which means there is no longer a commitment to eliminate these harmful substances, Greenpeace says.

Microsoft also backtracked on its commitment to phase out BFRs and PVC by the end of 2010, having no products that are completely free from these compounds.

Nintendo remains in last place with the same score of 1.8 out of 10 that it got in the previous edition of Greenpeace’s guide to greener electronics. It continues to score zero on all e-waste criteria and although it has improved its information to customers about access to its take-back programme in the US and Canada, this was not enough to score points.

Nintendo scores points on energy criteria, for the energy efficiency of its low power AC adaptor for the Nintendo DSi, which meets the requirements for external power supplies in the Energy Star programme. It also retains a point on energy for disclosing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its own operations. However, it fails to score for its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, due to a second year of increases, despite a commitment to cut CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases by 2 percent over each previous year. Emissions in 2007 increased by 1.5 percent compared to 2006, following a rise of 6 percent in 2006, Greenpeace states.

The full ranking:
1 – Nokia
2 – Sony Ericsson
3 – Philips
4 – HP
5 – Samsung
6 – Motorola / Panasonic / Sony
9 – Apple
10 – Dell
11 – Sharp
12 – Acer
13 – Fujitsu
14 – LG / Lenovo
16 – Toshiba
17 – Microsoft
18 – Nintendo

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Green Living: 5 natural hangover remedies

An useful piece of advice from Mother Nature Network. Happy New Year!

Bananas: When it comes to home hangover remedies, reaching for a humble banana or two is one of the most effective ways to combat a case of the post-Champagne nasties. Excessive alcohol intake can eliminate your body’s supply of potassium. Bananas fill you back up with this essential mineral quickly, safely and cheaply. If you anticipate that the morning after is going to be a rough one, place a couple of bananas on your bedside table.

Water: Even though you’re filling your body with liquids, boozin’ is a surefire way to become uncomfortably dehydrated. We recommend following the “two carafe rule": If you plan on imbibing, keep two carafes of tap water by your bed (alongside those bananas). Drink one before you go to sleep, and drink the other when you wake up the next morning. Many folks drink water only when taking aspirin, ibuprofen or other pain-relieving medicines. We say skip ‘em when treating a hangover, since they can only complicate things and make you feel worse if there’s still alcohol in your system. Opt to take B-vitamins instead.

Fruit juice: Guzzling fructose- and glucose-heavy fruit juices, particularly freshly squeezed varieties, raises blood-sugar levels and replenishes your body with the essential vitamins depleted during drinking. But if a sour stomach accompanies your raging hangover, it’s best to avoid O.J. due to its high acidity. Drink stomach-soothing ginger ale instead. Whatever you do, avoid coffee and other caffeinated beverages. They may make you feel a bit less groggy, but they aren't helpful in conquering hangovers since they're diuretics, which will dehydrate you even more.

Honey: This potassium- and antioxidant-rich pantry staple boasts numerous hangover-helping qualities. Ingest it by itself or, better yet, spread it over a piece of dry toast or a cracker, since you do need to eat something during a hangover (even if your appetite tells you otherwise). In fact, the Royal Society of Chemistry believes eating a breakfast of honey-on-toast is one of the best ways to beat a New Year's Day hangover.

Soup: Does the sight of bacon and eggs — edibles that you’d normally scramble toward — make you feel even more nauseated while hungover? If honey-on-toast and bananas aren’t cutting it but you’d rather stay away from grease, opt for soup. Filled with vitamins and nutrients and that familiar “feel-good” taste that warms the senses, eating rehydrating soup is beneficial when battling hangovers. Something as basic as chicken soup can do the trick, but if you’re feeling ambitious, try experimenting with traditional “hangover soups” from around the globe, such as pho (Vietnam), haejangguk (Korea), pancita (Mexico) or borscht (Ukraine). It also helps to add a bit of spice to your hangover soup of choice, since sweating eliminate toxins from the body.

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Green Living: Italy bans plastic bags

From the TreeHuger: "Sustainability is made of little changes to our lifestyle that don't cost us anything and can save the planet," said Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italian Environmental Minister, as she confirmed that a ban on non-biodegradable, single-use plastic bags will take effect on 1 January 2011, for all of Italy.

The plastics industry protests that the rules are not clear, that the abrupt transition will have negative repercussions on consumers, and that Italy has no reason to take the initiative as there is no ban at the European level. But their arguments seem weak in light of the fact that the ban, originally announced for January 2010, has already been delayed a year to give the industry time for transition.

Further arguments include the cost of biodegradable bags (4-5 times more), and the fact that biodegradable plastics cannot yet meet the technical specifications that the non-biodegradable plastics meet; read: the biodegradable bags rip even as consumers pack their purchases at the cash register. Perhaps any inadequacy of the single-use biodegradable bags will convince more Italians to reach for multi-use bags. In a survey last November, 73% of Italians reported that they would use alternatives to single-use, non-biodegradable plastic bags when shopping.

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Green Living: Wii is the most energy efficient video game console

Tweet this post From the New York Times: Shopping for a video game console? The Electric Power Research Institute has ranked models on a characteristic that is rarely at the top of the list of must-have features: energy consumption.

Playing Madden NFL 11, the popular EA Sports video game, consumes roughly six times more electricity on the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 than on the Nintendo Wii, according to engineers at the institute’s lab in Knoxville, Tenn. The Wii drew an average of 13.7 watts vs. 84.8 watts for the PlayStation and 87.9 for the Xbox. (The figures do not count the TV screens that the boxes must be connected to.)

To calculate what this adds up to over the course of a year, the engineers drew on a 2006 estimate by the Nielsen Company that heavy users play for five hours and 45 minutes a day. That puts the Wii’s consumption in the range of 29 kilowatt hours, which the engineers compared to that of a fluorescent light fixture with two four-foot tubes. The consumptions of the PlayStation, at 179 kilowatt hours, and the Xbox, at 184 kilowatt-hours, were akin to a washing machine’s or a television set’s.

The Xbox and the PlayStation “are very powerful computing units that have powerful graphics cards and powerful processors, and it takes a lot more power to run things like that,’’ said Jeffrey A. Dols, a project manager at the lab. “The Wii is much less powerful.’’

In fact, in the Madden game, the players have recognizable faces on the PlayStation and the Xbox; on the Wii, the images are “more cartoony,’’ he said.

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Off-topic: Are fake Christmas trees better on the environment?

From the New York Times: In these eco-conscious times, many people want to shrink their environmental footprint while still enjoying the trappings of the holiday season. In some cases, the earth-friendly alternative – pass the tofurky – is a pretty obvious choice.

But in others, the answer is not so clear. When it comes to Christmas trees, for instance, which is better for the planet: the long-lasting artificial kind, or the freshly cut, pine-scent-and-sap variety?

As I report in Saturday’s Times, at least one major study found that the real tree is probably the better choice. But as I found during my reporting, many consumers still believe that a faux fir is less harmful to the environment than the real thing.

That’s because an artificial tree can be used again and again, unlike a real tree, which is tossed out at the end of the season. Yet as it turns out, that’s not enough to tilt the scales in the faux fir’s favor. The resources used to make artificial trees — plastic and metal — have a high extraction cost, and most trees are made in China, meaning they need to be shipped thousands of miles before they reach American shores. Read more...

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Swedish region becomes independent from oil for heating

Green heating? It is possible, tell the swedes and the New York Times: Over the course of the last decade, Kristianstad’s government has orchestrated a conversion from mostly oil heating to various “green” fuels like biomass, food processing waste and wood pellets.

It’s quite interesting because it is so easy to think, “Impossible!” when some environmental policy experts suggest that countries should cut emissions by, say, 20 or 30 percent by 2020. As many of the articles in our “Beyond Fossil Fuels” series point out, some methods for drastically reducing emissions exist. But they come with economic costs (at least in the short term) and require a political commitment.

Having cut out fossil fuel for heating, Kristianstad’s per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are now only about 4.1 tons per person. Compare that to 19.18 in the United States and 4.91 in China, a far less developed country than Sweden.

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Old elevated railway in Manhattan becomes a park

Awesome solution to paint cities green. From SustainableCities.dk:

June 2009 saw the opening of New York’s High Line, a coherent stretch of green parkland on an old elevated railway on Manhattan. The new park immediately became a major attraction. A second section is expected to open in 2010 to give New Yorkers a 2.3 kilometer- (1.5 mile-) long green corridor. The High Line railway, which was in operation until 1980, now fulfils in its new function as a much sought after green area in the Big Apple. (Read more)

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