2nd Green Revolution

The following article is by Alison Hopcroft,a sustainability and carbon management consultant who works for Fluid Market Strategies in Portland, Oregon. Alison is leading a free webinar on carbon management this Tuesday, March 2nd at 12pm EST.

Despite the fact that hope for meaningful climate legislation has all but completely disappeared for this session of Congress, climate regulation will be arriving at some point in the near future. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the avenue for this regulation, and although many industry groups and a group of senators are challenging the EPA’s Endangerment Finding released last December advocating for a slower phase-in of regulations with higher reporting thresholds, the EPA’s Final Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Rule is still in effect (Read more about these challenges in the New York Times and the Washington Post)

Regulation means that there will be an increased need for professionals who can quantify and verify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Quantification is the accounting of all of an organization’s emissions, otherwise known as developing a GHG inventory. Verification is essentially an audit (the act of verifying that the quantification was performed accurately) and follows the reporting protocols and meets reporting standards. Read the rest of this entry »

As reported in a post last summer, Frito-Lay is set to unveil a 100% compostable bag for their Sunchips product on April 22nd for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. It appears, however, that the bag is already in use (picture at right) and being sold at stores, specifically the Super Target at 4301 East Virginia Ave. in Denver, CO. The video/commercial below shows time-lapse disintegration of the bag.
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Source of original image: Bizarro

Earlier this month on Public Radio International’s daily program The World, reporter Murray Carpenter highlighted “some of the new technologies that help consumers trace the global journey of their purchases and calculate their environmental cost.” If companies are going to argue their products are truly green, there needs to be independent verification. Greenwashing (making specious claims about the environmental impact of a product) and lifecycle analysis (a full accounting the energy consumed and materials involved over the entire lifetime of a product) are two topics gaining increased exposure in the upcoming regenerative economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Bloom Energy had the official public unveiling of their solid oxide fuel cell technology today in Silicon Valley. After years of flying under the radar as a stealth start-up, the company made it’s debut on the world stage with a bang. California governor Arnold Swarzenegger was on hand as was former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Google co-founder Larry Page, venture capitalist John Doerr, and executives from eBay, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and FedEx. These companies have been generating energy from Bloom Boxes (units that contain stacks of these fuel cells) on a trial basis. According to TechCrunch, “Five Bloom energy boxes about the size of a parking space each now provide 15 percent of the power at eBay’s campus. Walmart is testing the boxes in two locations where [they are] carrying 60 to 80 percent of the energy load of an entire store.” A video describing the technology can be found here. Below is Bloom Energy’s explanation of how their technology is more flexible and better than “hydrogen” fuel cells. Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow up to our most recent Five Friday Facts about the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Summary for Policy Makers (PDF), National Public Radio’s Science Friday program had a wonderful discussion of science and how it is portrayed in the media. The panel, which included a Pulitzer Prize winner, a professor of journalism, and a climatologist among others, focused on the reporting of science in the media, especially given the decline in readership and funding for reporters covering science. Read the rest of this entry »

Green energy start-ups often promise revolutionary technology in going after the Holy Grail of clean, cheap, efficient, and abundant energy only to disappoint in the end. What makes Bloom Energy and the claims that they make any different? Well, perhaps nothing. But perhaps they will back up their talk when a mysterious countdown on their homepage is explained on Wednesday. Featured recently on 60 Minutes, the company is the product of a foray into business by former NASA engineer KR Sridhar. The origin of the technology goes back to a project to produce oxygen for astronauts on Mars. Once that program was scrapped by NASA, Sridhar reversed his design to make a fuel cell that uses oxygen and fuel to produce electricity. Read the rest of this entry »

The household cleaning product industry has given consumers a way to clean just about every type of stain, spill, mold, dirt, and blemish that there is. Many of them work as advertised, resulting in clean shower doors, mold free tile, spotless ovens and sparkling living spaces. The drawback to all this is that many of the most effective cleaners are either toxic, malodorous, and/or environmentally unfriendly. Ecodiscoveries, co-founded in 2007 by Emory University alumnus David Schurer, is aiming to dispel the stereotype that green cleaning products don’t work as well as more stringent solutions. The company promises that “safe has an effective side”. It currently sells five plant based and three enzyme based cleaners that are made for cleaning glass, kitchens, and baths using “all-natural substances to eliminate dirt and grime without toxic chemicals, fragrances, or dyes.”

In addition, Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow up to the vermicompost (worm composting) post the other day, today’s post delves into outdoor composting. While similar in their goals, vermicompost and outdoor compost bins have radically different requirements. As suggested by the name, outdoor compost bins require access to the outdoors so that naturally occurring microorganisms can populate the compost pile. In contrast to vermicompost, the microbiotic organisms enter the pile from the atmosphere. Some inoculant – a small amount of soil containing bacteria and other decomposers – is added during the process. Read the rest of this entry »

For a slightly different take on the Five Friday Facts comes the “virtually certain” impacts of climate change. This data comes from the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) Summary for Policy Makers (PDF).

The definition of virtually certain used by the IPCC is a greater than 99% probability of occurrence. According to statistical analysis, the likelihood of these occurrences are statistically significant. However, they are all based on projections that reflect science’s current knowledge and as a result cannot account for all factors related to climate variability.

- Eric Wilson