Category: Green

General Motors, a hefty if hesitant complier in greener technology to cut down on CO2 emissions, has teamed up with two other companies to further clean up their energy usage.  With approval from the government of Aragon, Spain, GM will soon own the world's largest solar power station.

Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy are designing the solar power station with a capacity of 10 Mega Watts at GM's Zaragoza plant, which assembles more than 480,000 vehicles a year.  According to GM, the power the station conducts from the sun could meet "the demand of 4,600 households with an average annual consumption of 3,300 kWh."

The massive solar array will consist of 85,000 light-weight solar modules with a surface area of 183,000 square meters, and provide for an annual reduction in CO2-emissions of 6.7 thousand tons.  It marks the third solar power station on GM facilities worldwide.  

This information was taken from a GM press release available here, and surely it serves to boast the company's reputation and "good work."  But any addition to green technology is good, and perhaps others can learn from the automaker's example, since apparently powerful financial deals can be arranged among growing green companies like Veolia and Clairvoyant.  

Allocating environmentally friendly resources can be hard when they aren’t reaching the poorest communities who are most at risk from the impact global warming. That’s why a London based coalition, with the help of the International Institute for Environment and Development, (IIED) is launching a new funding scheme that addresses such concerns, particularly on “existing trade in carbon credits.” (Megan Rowling, Reuters) Other partners in the project include the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Greenpeace, CARE International and Irish based charity center Trocaire. The plan is a way to have both individuals and business organizations “take some responsibility for the damage caused by their carbon emissions in the short term.”

“It connects me with a human being at the other end of the world who’s being affected by my pollution, and I then invest in that person and relate to that person, and feel there is solidarity between us,” Saleemul Huq said, who leads the climate change group at IIED. “It’s not buying and selling,” he added. “It’s is much more investing in people.”

The new plan includes not necessarily concentrating on conventional carbon offsetting “which has focused mostly on promoting renewable energy” but coming up with plans to help vulnerable people cope with drought and flooding. The scheme will mainly deal in fusing, “mitigation” promoting activities that enable some of the poorest communities in the world to deal with climate-related problems they already face.

The program is designed to give these people more practical skills in order to survive these global climate changes. Certain activities include teaching children to swim in India so they can survive floods, as well as planting drought-resistant cashew trees where families sell them to schools for their main source of income.

However, activities are not just practical skills. The group will also be implanting solar powered lighting in certain communities in order for young schoolchildren to complete their homework at night, as well as solar powered freezers in Brazil so residents can store natural products they use to make and sell juice. The coalition also hopes to use wasted resources and turn them into workable ones. For example, in Bosnia, partners of the coalition are pairing up with a pastry manufacturer to “convert used cooking oil into biodiesel that could power city buses in Tuzia.” (Reuters)

“This is very much not a minor absolution for your carbon sins, but is honestly a compensation payment for the impact you know your personal carbon emissions will have,” Andrew Simms, policy leader at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) said on Tuesday.

Some businesses are cautious of the collation as it relies on ‘offsetting’ which makes it hard to tell exactly where the money goes. Critics of the plan also say it’s a way to simply delay businesses in taking accountability for their carbon footprint. Charities who are participating also worry that funding small projects is growing more difficult because companies, “who act as brokers,” are more concerned with projects that deliver massive emissions savings.

Other businesses are finding it hard to measure exactly what is being saved. As Michael Schlup, director of the Gold Standard Foundation, points out, “with mitigation, you have tons of carbon, but with adaptation, are you saving lives or dollars?” Schlup’s company makes clean energy products and supports sustainable development.

But the coalition claims skeptics can continually track their progress online, which should give possible investors more faith in what they’re accomplishing and how.

The United Nations has set a budget of approximately 86 billion dollars in new financing by 2015 to help the world’s poor population cope with climate change. But this is merely a fraction of what is needed, according to aid agencies, which is why coalitions concentrating on carbon offsetting are taking the stage.

The program will be tested in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America next year.

A survey was recently conducted in Bangalore, India that hints at some potentially disturbing fuel usage trends among car owners. According to the findings of Biodiversity Conservation [India] Limited (BCIL) Bangaloreans still haven't made the battle against carbon emissions a top priority.

While global attention has shifted towards more renewable energy sources and zero-emissions technology, it appears that it hasn't weighed on too many minds in one of India's largest metropolitan areas. The survey inspired by the increasing number of car owners in the region, interviewed 315 auto-owning respondents. 100% of those surveyed drove a car regularly to an office, and 51% travel more than 30 kilometers per day. 85% used their cars for shopping and errands, while 75% also owned a motorcycle along with a car.

Now, 315 people isn't much to go on for an entire city-wide survey, but BCIL is concerned that it reflects a common pattern among the city's most productive citizens. 86% of the group were college Graduates or post-Graduates and 88% were with household incomes of more than 20,000 rupees per month.

It would appear fuel conservation just simply isn't on the minds of those who travel. Only 22% of those polled have practiced car pooling. More than 50% never even thought of using Public Transportation services, believing them to be crowded and of poor quality. It almost seems as if Bangalore has reached a point most American cities hit in the 1950's. A booming economy is leading to more excitement for the automobile and it's promises of unrestrained, personal mobility.

But it isn't the 1950's anymore, and the global consciousness needs to expand when it comes to realizing the dangers of CO2 emissions. Mr. Chandrashekar Hariharan, CEO of BCIL said, "Consumption of oil and oil products is responsible for 57% of the CO2 emissions in the country today. And among all oil-consuming sectors, CO2 emissions from transport are increasing at the fastest rate – at more than 6 per cent per annum. The need of the hour therefore is to think of methods to conserve fuel. It is sad that even a seemingly evolved city like Bangalore is not willing to take the lead in fuel conservation.”

This was the second of a series of quarterly surveys BCIL plans to conduct in order to find greener solutions for urban living.

A few weeks ago, and even months ago, there was a lot of information going around about the Chinese government’s attempts to go green for the 2008 Olympic games. Beijing used clean power and energy-efficient materials and machines for the “Green Games.” But other countries did their part for the Green Olympics too, including the US, whose athletes wore eco-friendly uniforms.

Nike, the US-based athletic wear company, provided green uniforms and footwear for athletes representing both China and the United States. Nike worked with Team USA the Chinese Olympic Committee to create high-tech, high-performance outfits for the games.

Their most innovative adaptation was using 100% recycled polyester for the uniforms, like the Swift Suit worn in Track & Field events. The polyester fibers came from recycled soda bottles as well as post-industrial scraps.

Not only were the suits eco-friendly, but the company claims that they have a7% drag reduction over the suits designed for the Athens games. The reduction gives an edge of up to 0.02 seconds off a sprinter's time in a 100m race, which could mean the difference between gold and silver.

Shoes were also eco-friendlier than ever before. Nike shoes worn by both basketball players and track and field competitors were made using the new “Flywire” design that radically reduces the weight and ends the use of multiple layers of material to create support in the shoes

The reduction of materials means there are fewer resources used overall, both in the construction and recycling of the shoe. If you want to play like the Olympians, the technology is available to the public in Nike's “Hyperdunk” shoes.

According to Mark Ontkush of the EcoIron Blog, Google might be hindering the battle against global warming.  In a post that has generated over 4,000 "diggs" on Digg.com, he notes that the color of a web page can determine how much electricity is used when viewing it.  An all white page uses about 74 watts to display while an all black one uses only 59.  Ontkush provided his calculations as to what this means in world-wide energy usage: 

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background [on a CRT monitor! mjo] will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

It's a fascinating point.  Should now be the time to end the days of all white web pages?

Thinking about going vegetarian? Now is the time as eating such a diet can help drastically reduce your carbon footprint.

A German study found that a meat eater is responsible for nearly twice as many emissions as a vegetarian. The Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOeW) said a year of eating meat produces greenhouse gases equivalent to driving a mid-sized car 4,758 kilometers (2,956 miles).

In the same amount of time, a vegetarian diet produces the same emissions as driving 2,427 kilometers according to the IOeW in a study commissioned by independent consumer protection group Foodwatch.

According to a story by the AFP, the calculations for the study are based on emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane produced by the animals themselves, as well as emissions from food production including manufacturing feed and fertilizer and the use of farmland.

A vegan diet, one without meat and dairy, cuts emissions used in producing food seven-fold--to the equivalent of driving 629 kilometers. And eating all organic food even further reduces your carbon impact to being nearly a 17th of that of a meat-eater, equivalent to driving 281 kilometers.

The study found beef production to be especially unfriendly, with the production of 2.2 pounds being the same as driving 71 kilometers; compared to 26 kilometers for the production of pork.

Overall the study found that while switching to organic farming greatly reduces emissions, "what counts is the way we feed ourselves ... production and consumption first and foremost of beef and milk must be cut drastically.”

I couldn't help but think of Buster Keaton movies, old time factories, and black, waxed mustaches after stumbling upon a press release by Clean Power Technologies Inc. today.  It seems the company developed a technology that successfully achieved a 40% reduction in vehicle fuel consumptions, and they owe it to the wonders of steam technology.

Steam technology--something once prominent in the 19th century in Victorian era England, and making up a popular aesthetic movement known as "steampunk," is proving itself to still be practical in our modern times.  CPT engineered the CESAR system, a design that increases fuel economy and reduces emissions by capturing, storing, and reusing otherwise wasted heat from the exhaust of a conventional combustion engine.  The company explains how it works:

A heat exchanger captures waste energy, which is then stored in the form of steam in an accumulator, enabling a vapour engine to use the steam on demand. Once the combustion engine is shut down, vehicle power can be produced solely by the auxiliary vapour engine. The CESAR process will provide all the auxiliary power requirements (e.g. refrigeration and air conditioning) of light cars and trucks, with further potential for application in locomotive and marine applications.

The goal is to now build a second generation of the steam accumulator, making it lighter and more efficient for ordinary automobile use.  Based in East Sussex, CPT conducted successful tests with a Mazda RX8 engine, as well as the more industrial-purposed  Caterpillar C18 diesel engine.

President and CEO Abdul Mitha said, "Combustion engine and steam hybrid technology offers huge potential for green transport and our technology will be able to be adopted by vehicle manufacturers cost-effectively without any government subsidy support or need for new delivery or transporation systems. Our technology is unique, effective and elegant in its simplicity and I am extremely proud of what our dedicated team has achieved."

Now, if the company can start designing vehicles with this sort of Jules Verne-like aesthetic, I'll really be on board:

The Nature Conservancy and a dozen of the world's top marine scientists met up in Honolulu recently to declare one major thing: acidification is a huge threat to our oceans, and therefore us.  The scientists introduced the latest key findings and potential solutions to tackle the subjects of ocean acidification and coral reef management.

“Coral reefs are at the heart of our tropics, and millions of people around the world depend on these systems for their livelihoods. Without urgent action to limit carbon dioxide emissions and improve management of marine protected areas, even vast treasured reefs like the Great Barrier Reef and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands will become wastelands of dead coral,” said Lynne Hale, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Marine Initiative. 

Acidification occurs as a result of oceans absorbing carbon dioxide and other chemical compounds.  Oceans absorb approximately one-third of the CO2 in the atmosphere, which then mixes with the sea water to form carbonic acid.  This acid mixture then lowers the pH of the waters and disrupts marine ecosystems and species.  

The increasing amounts of acid in our oceans is the main culprit behind the declining numbers of coral reefs, which also means the decline in fish and other marine species, which will eventually mean a lot less of us.  At the recent meeting in Honolulu, researchers announced that current estimates show we could lose all coral reefs by the end of the century, or in a worst case scenario much sooner than that.

As a combatant, the group made notes as to what else can be tacked onto pushes for tougher legislation limiting carbon emissions.  One suggestion on their declaration (to be presented in front of the United Nations in coming months) may seem like common sense, but it's a crucial if subtle suggestion: mandating the inclusion of climate change actions into marine protected area management plans.  The group feels the atmosphere and the ocean tend to get separated a bit too much during global warming talks, and their declaration hopes to change consciousness by further connecting the dots.

To request a copy of the Honolulu Declaration, the Nature Conservancy provided an e-mail address to do so: cmestre@tnc.org 

As the green movement gains force, more and more major companies are jumping on the profitable green bandwagon, and the phone book company is the latest.

The Yellow Pages are offering customers a green way to opt out of having the heavy phone books delivered to your door. To save paper, fill out the form found at YellowPagesGoesGreen.org to get rid of your paper phone book.

It seems like these days, most people use the Internet find phone numbers, so you probably won’t miss those heavy yellow deliveries appearing on your doorstep.

A while back we reported (with some skepticism) a report coming out of China that said that country would be producing over 100 gigawatts of wind by 2020, a 1,500% increase.