2nd Green Revolution

I Don’t Understand Parking Lots

In an op-ed a few months back I alluded to the coming diatribe against parking lots. As a form of land use, parking lots make no sense to me. Conversely, ...

The Angry Pedestrian: An Introduction

Let me say first off that I own a car. I drive. I don't drive a ton, I don't drive everyday, I don't drive to my job, but I understand ...

What Will It Take to Make Mass Transit the Norm?

Will people start consistently riding mass transit when gas prices stay above $5 per gallon? $10? What about when we are paying the true cost of driving (i.e. emissions, disposal)? ...

Designing Cities with People in Mind

I'm not a city planner. I took one class in college, so I don't even pretend to be qualified. However, living in a city and trying to commute without a ...

Earth Day 2012

Celebrating the 42nd Earth Day and 4.5 billion years of earth. Image from NASA Johnson Space Center

Building for the Next 500 Years

by Eric Wilson on April 8th, 2012

While attending a United States Green Building Council (USGBC) meeting recently, someone mentioned that a local university was building to a 500 year standard. I had never heard the term prior, but the idea was all too familiar. The university was constructing buildings to last the next 500 years. This is incredibly difficult to fathom for many Americans. Our country has been inhabited by settlers for just over 500 years and no structures exist from those days. The Native Americans that lived on the land prior to settlers constructed cliff dwellings like those found in Gila National Park down in New Mexico or Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. Many of these have been around more than 500 years, but are not inhabited today. As a curious side note, the Los Angeles Times recently ran a story about Chinese (upward of 30 million) that live in caves today. However, structures built shortly after European settlers landed did not resemble the sturdy stone buildings in the old country.

The reason the idea is familiar stems from my time living in Europe.

EPA’s P3: Planet, Prosperity, People

by Eric Wilson on April 7th, 2012

In the vein of honesty, the three words under our logo, “People. Planet. Profit.” are not our own. John Elkington is credited with coining the phrase. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has swapped out “profit” for prosperity and rearranged the phrase, also known by the shortened “P3″. Under the umbrella of P3, EPA is running a student design competition for sustainability. “Through this EPA program, college students can benefit people, promote prosperity and protect the planet by designing solutions that move us towards a sustainable future.”

The competition consists of two sections with part two of the competition coming up later this month in Washington, DC at the National Sustainable Design Expo (which can be found on our calendar). In step one of the competition, which has already completed, teams were awarded $15,000 to develop their solution for a sustainable future. In this round, students compete for the P3 Award and $90,000 in seed money to produce their idea. Some of the winners from last year include a lightweight green roof system and footwear made from renewable sources.

Areas of eligibility include

Five Friday Facts: Technology and US Fuel

by Justin Manger on April 6th, 2012

The incredible drop in imported liquid fuels such as oil over the last 6 years is due in large part to technological breakthroughs in drilling and recovery techniques that has let the U.S. capture more of its natural (though non-renewable) resources. The debates over the pros and cons to this trend of using advanced technology to increase homemade production of traditional resources will be intense, but one thing seems certain: “We’re having a revolution,” says well driller Apache’s chief executive Steve Farris. “And we’re just scratching the surface.”

Here are a few facts about that trend.

In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid fuels it used, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have been around for years, but over the last five years, engineers have fine-tuned these and other techniques, even as many environmentalists worry about their impact on water and air.
Some advances include: Computer programs have been developed to simulate wells before they are even drilled. Advanced fiber optics permit senior engineers at company headquarters to keep track of drillers on the well pad, telling them when necessary where to direct the drill bit and what pressure to use in injecting fracking fluids. Seismic work has become far more sophisticated, with drillers dropping microphones down adjacent wells to measure seismic events resulting from a fracking job so they can more accurately determine the porosity and permeability of rocks when they drill nearby in the future.
Just a decade ago, complete wells were fracked at the same time with millions of gallons of water, sand and chemical gels. Now the wells are fracked in stages, with various kinds of plugs and balls used to isolate the bursting of rock one section at a time, allowing for longer-reaching, more productive horizontal wells.
A well that might have taken 30 days to drill can be drilled in just 10, for a savings of $500,000 a well.

Sources:

EPA Closer to Approving 15 percent Ethanol-Gasoline Blend

by Chris DeArmond on April 5th, 2012

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently gave approval to 20 fuel and fuel additive manufacturers registering ethanol to use in the production of E15—a gasoline blend containing 15 percent ethanol. Since the fuel may only be used in vehicles model year (MY) 2001 and newer, the approved manufacturers must also develop a misfueling mitigation plan to sell the fuel legally. Furthermore, the fuel must pass a series of federal tests and comply with additional state and local laws, some of which may hinder or prohibit the sale of higher ethanol-gasoline blends.

While many additional steps must clearly be taken before E15 can hit the market, the EPA’s decision is significant. Excluding two important instances (discussed below), the amount of ethanol in gasoline has been limited to 10 percent for the past 30 years. This means that automakers that have traditionally used E10 to rate fuel economy could soon find their figures dropping if E15 becomes the new standard (since ethanol is less energy dense, and therefore less efficient, than gasoline). There are also many environmental considerations. For example, one study cited in an infographic from an earlier post found that it would require 11 acres to power a car using 100 percent ethanol for one year.

However, this isn’t the first time the EPA has increased the permissible level of ethanol to 15 percent.

Apple To Use Bloom Energy Fuel Cells At New Data Center

by Justin Manger on April 4th, 2012

In a following up to our post in February about the green data center Apple is planning to build in North Carolina, a few more interesting details about the facility have come to light.

Aside from being LEED Platinum certified and having the largest end-user solar power array in the U.S., there will also be a 5MW fuel cell installation. The local North Carolina newspaper News and Record states that the provider of the 24 fuel cell modules will be Bloom Energy (our previous posts here; their homepage here).

A recent filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission states

LightSail Energy, Storing the Wind and Sun

by Eric Wilson on April 3rd, 2012

The days of a single dominant energy source are just about over. In the U.S., no one source provides a majority of the energy that is converted into electricity. Recent numbers put coal at the top of several sources. It is responsible for 45% of the electricity generated as of 2010. Moving forward, there will be a suite of energy sources (natural gas, possibly nuclear, hydroelectric dams, wind, and solar). However, the issues with the latter two are well documented. A recent start-up in northern California may have the answer. In what we like to refer to as the “holy grail” of energy, LightSail Energy is developing a storage system that may allow renewable, intermittent sources like solar and wind to be easily captured during off peak times and stored for later use during peak times.

Founded by wunderkind Danielle Fong, a 24 year old former doctoral student at Princeton, LightSail Energy uses compressed air to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar. For a description of their technology, click here. Fong, a recipient of Forbes Magazine’s Top 30 under 30 recognition for those in the energy sector, co-founded LightSail Energy.

LightSail employs a four-step, fully reversible process to store energy. By converting electricity into heat, the company aims to use compressed air to store energy produced during off-peak times. For instance, wind energy is produced at night more than the hottest times of the day. According to Fong, the big breakthrough in using compressed air for energy storage (which is not a new idea) is using water to prevent overheating. For a visual representation of the procedure

Number Of Green Jobs In U.S. Measured For First Time

by Justin Manger on April 2nd, 2012

The numbers have been crunched by the Labor Department and the results are in: green jobs accounted for an eye-poppingly low 2.4% of the United States’ total employment in 2010.

However, this was the first ever survey of green goods and services jobs, so we don’t yet have something with which to compare the results. Out of the total 3.1 million jobs categorized as green, the private sector provided the most green employment opportunities. The public sector contributed 860,000 jobs.
It is still hard to define and measure green jobs, as this Washington Post article points out:

In the past, employment in this field has been hard to measure because there’s been no consensus on what constitutes a green job. For its assessment, the Labor Department counted certain jobs in manufacturing, construction, utility and other sectors in which the primary function was to contribute to a green product or service. That includes the manufacture of

Learning to Embrace The Slow Life

by Eric Wilson on April 1st, 2012

I was washing dishes the other day and bemoaning how time consuming it was. This sparked one of those internal conversations that seem to dominate my thoughts when doing mindless chores. “How much time would I spend going to a restaurant, not to mention money, to have a meal prepared that may or may not be worth it? Is cooking food and cleaning up after myself worth the effort?” The second to last rule (#63) in Michael Pollan’s Food Rules is “Cook.” Pollan makes the argument that obesity is in part related to not cooking for one’s self since you can’t control what goes into the meal. Additionally, the portion sizes at restaurant are often quite large. As a positive, it can be enjoyable to cook, assuming it doesn’t turn out like the schlock from Worst Cooks in America.

The clean-up aside, the act of taking raw ingredients and crafting something is unrivaled (much like working with ones hands). The process can be lengthy, but it is important to connect with your food. I don’t mean emotionally, but rather to understand how something like ground beef can be turned into meatloaf. Recently I’ve started trying to make my own pasta. The freshness and surprising ease is only part of the benefit. It costs no more, and often less, than dried store bought noodles. Buying dried black beans in bulk is another example. It is both economical and healthy. I control how much salt or flavor goes into the beans, and it doesn’t require preservatives. However, it takes a lot longer than popping open a can of beans that cost $1.29. This is the trade-off, perhaps:

April 2012 Clean Energy and Sustainability Events

by Eric Wilson on March 31st, 2012

When thinking about mining, sustainability is not the first word that comes to mind. For that very reason, the Sustainable Mining Conference in London presents an interesting notion. Can mining be sustainable? It would be hard to argue in favor since mining mostly procures minerals which do not regenerate in a human lifetime, making them nonrenewable resources. For those curious about the topic, this may be a worthwhile conference.

Other than the British conference on mining, the rest of the events below are domestic. Many of them deal with higher education’s commitment to sustainability, including one at Webster University in my old stomping grounds of St. Louis, Missouri. Take a look at some of the choice events and peruse our calendar for conferences near you.

Our compilation is in no way exhaustive, so please free to let us know of any conferences, events, or festivals in your area. If they are appropriate, we will gladly add them to our green events calendar. Please send us an email with the event’s name, date, location, description, and website. In fact, one of the events listed below was submitted by a reader of the site.

Here are a few of the events happening around the world:

Five Friday Facts: Tour de Fat

by Eric Wilson on March 30th, 2012

Earlier this week, the 2012 Tour de Fat dates were released. Organized by sustainability heroes New Belgium Brewing, the Tour is a celebration of bicyclists. Here are this week’s Five Friday Facts based on the 2011 and upcoming 2012 festival.

In 2011, Tour de Fat traveled to 13 cities, attracting a total of 69,550 festival attendees and 41,150 parade cyclists.
In addition, the festival raised $331,428 and boasted an impressive 90 percent diversion of waste from landfills.
13 cities took part in the 2011 festival, with 2 more (Atlanta and Washington, DC) being added this year.
One winner from each city will trade in their cars keys for a $2,250 stipend to build a custom bike. The car will then be auctioned off by Vehicles for Charity, with proceeds to benefit local cycling organizations.
The Tour de Fat celebrates its 13 year of merriment in 2012.

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