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8 Amazing Green Buildings That Break Even on Energy Consumption

8 Feb

A zero-energy building is one that produces as much energy as it consumes, making it a net-zero energy property and eliminating energy bills for its owners. Although zero-energy homes and buildings are quite rare today, increasing concerns about energy waste have set the stage for a growing market….

Zero-energy initiatives are so popular that even the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is getting in on the action, with plans to build its first renewable energy project, to be called Fort Irwin Solar. This should be the start to massive savings for the DoD, as it spends $4 billion per year on energy for its 300,000 buildings.

via 8 Amazing Green Buildings That Break Even on Energy Consumption.

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Innovations in Light – NYTimes.com

3 Feb

Some fascinating stuff here about getting lighting without the overhead of the grid:

If you look at the market for solar lighting in Africa, you’ll be excused for thinking that you’re looking at the mobile phone market some 15 years ago. Both are leapfrog technologies — neither land lines nor the electrical grid is going to reach much of the continent, so let’s just skip that generation of technology and move to the next one. Like cellphones, solar lamps are getting cheaper, smaller, better. Both are life-changing, indispensable. And the market is enormous. Today, about 1.5 million people in Africa use solar lamps. That’s a huge number — but it’s less than 1 percent of the potential market. A fifth of the world’s population lives without electricity. Another large group of people do have access to electricity, but need an alternative because it is too expensive and power outages are daily events.

The problem isn’t finding the technology, it’s coming up with a business model that people can afford. Three examples are discussed.

via Innovations in Light – NYTimes.com.

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Environmentalism and the Black Church – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

3 Feb

Those in the African-American church have a long history of environmental justice that goes back to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nascent role. He was a central figure during the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, in which working-class people were striving to improve their conditions — a precursor to some of today’s environmental struggles….

I am not aware of any national faith-based organization leading the charge around issues that face African-Americans concerning the environment. I do know that we have a local model at St. Andrew A.M.E. in Memphis. The church and the surrounding community are actively responding to the plight of local African-Americans concerning poor nutrition and environmental inequity.

via Environmentalism and the Black Church – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

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Can saving the Amazon save the planet? – GlobalPost – Salon.com

1 Feb

Some 20 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions now come from deforestation, especially in the lush, green band of tropical rainforest that circles the earth.

That is more than from global transport.

So representatives from member states involved in UN climate negotiations are attempting to hammer out a way to make it more profitable to protect forests than destroy them.

By providing cash for maintaining healthy forests, they hope to undermine the economic imperative for poor countries or individuals to cut down trees for timber, to free land for agriculture, or to make way for roads, housing and other infrastructure.

The idea, known as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD, will be included in the successor to the Kyoto protocol, which is now the only international treaty aimed at climate change.

via Can saving the Amazon save the planet? – GlobalPost – Salon.com.

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In Defense of Clean Energy – NYTimes.com

29 Jan

The lengthy Republican investigation into the failure of a single solar energy company, Solyndra, has already raised doubts about the value and integrity of a multibillion-dollar federal program designed to support renewable energy development. Mr. Obama had the right response: The failure of some public investments to pan out was not reason enough to abandon clean energy or “cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany.” It’s an argument he will have to keep making.

via In Defense of Clean Energy – NYTimes.com.

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The Mississippi Delta Must Be Restored – NYTimes.com

28 Jan

The future of all our shellfish and fisheries — shrimp, oyster, redfish, pompano, speckled trout — hinges on restoration of the delta wetlands using the billions that BP and other companies could end up owing. Since a hurricane’s storm surge is reduced by the wetlands it travels across — by as much as a foot for every two and a half miles, according to some scientists — the longevity of New Orleans also relies on the wetlands’ restoration. How else to get all that grain from the heartland to international markets?

via The Mississippi Delta Must Be Restored – NYTimes.com.

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Fracking: The new front of Occupy – Environment – Salon.com

23 Jan

While most anti-fracking activists have been responding to harms already done, New York State’s resistance has been waging a battle to keep harm at bay. Jack Ossont, a former helicopter pilot, has been active all his life in the state’s environmental and social battles. He calls fracking “the tsunami issue of New York. It washes across the entire landscape.”

Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and scholar-in-residence at Ithaca College, terms the movement “the biggest since abolition and women’s rights in New York.” This past November, when the Heinz Foundation awarded Steingraber $100,000 for her environmental activism, she gave it to the anti-fracking community.

Arriving in the state last October, I discovered a sprawl of loosely connected, grassroots groups whose names announce their counties and their long-term vision: Sustainable Otsego, Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, Chenango Community Action for Renewable Energy, Gas-Free Seneca, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Catskill Mountainkeeper. Of these few (there are many more), only the last has a paid staff. All the others are run by volunteers.

via Fracking: The new front of Occupy – Environment – Salon.com.

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Offsetting global warming: Molecule in Earth’s atmosphere could ‘cool the planet’

21 Jan

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2012) — Scientists have shown that a newly discovered molecule in Earth’s atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet. …

Professor Dudley Shallcross, Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry at The University of Bristol, added: “A significant ingredient required for the production of these Criegee biradicals comes from chemicals released quite naturally by plants, so natural ecosystems could be playing a significant role in off-setting warming.”

via Offsetting global warming: Molecule in Earth’s atmosphere could ‘cool the planet’.

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The real beneficiaries of energy subsidies – Big Oil – Salon.com

18 Jan

In 2010, Bloomberg News released a report showing that global governmental support “for fossil fuels dwarf support given to renewable energy sources.” The numbers led one financial expert to note that while “mainstream investors worry that renewable energy only works with direct government support,” the truth is that “the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around ten times the subsidy for renewables.”

According to data compiled by the Environmental Law Institute, the United States is a big contributor to this global subsidy imbalance, “provid(ing) substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables.” In practice, some of the biggest of those U.S. subsidies come in the form of special tax breaks for oil and gas development, and in direct taxpayer funding of multinational corporations’ foreign mining projects (yes, you read that right — your tax dollars go to fund fossil fuel development overseas).

via The real beneficiaries of energy subsidies – Energy – Salon.com.

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New Texas Rule to Unlock Secrets of Hydraulic Fracturing – NYTimes.com

15 Jan

Starting Feb. 1, drilling operators in Texas will have to report many of the chemicals used in the process known as hydraulic fracturing. Environmentalists and landowners are looking forward to learning what acids, hydroxides and other materials have gone into a given well.

But a less-publicized part of the new regulation is what some experts are most interested in: the mandatory disclosure of the amount of water needed to “frack” each well. Experts call this an invaluable tool as they evaluate how fracking affects water supplies in the drought-prone state.

via New Texas Rule to Unlock Secrets of Hydraulic Fracturing – NYTimes.com.

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