Category Archives: green energy

This Is Mike Huckabee’s Brain on Ethanol

by FNEVaughnzo Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Mike Huckabee said the right things at the Iowa Ag Summit in March. Charlie Neibergall/AP

On the campaign trail, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has been a vocal supporter of the ethanol industry. The former Arkansas governor has repeatedly spoken out in defense of the Renewable Fuel Standard—the federal policy that requires energy companies to blend billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation’s gasoline and diesel supply. That makes political sense in Iowa, where corn is big business. Ethanol made from corn constitutes the vast majority of domestic biofuel consumption. And roughly 40 percent of corn grown in the United States is used to produce ethanol.

So it was a bit surprising when Huckabee used his latest book to take direct aim at biofuels such as ethanol. In the middle of a chapter questioning the science of climate change, he suggested that biofuels have been propped up by unscientific “environmentalist policies” that drive up food prices and make global warming worse. Here’s the relevant passage from God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, which was published in January:

Climate change isn’t the only field in which the environmental movement has claimed to represent unassailable scientific truth, only to be brought up short by new data.

For years, we were told that biofuels were the future. Skeptics who questioned whether it took more energy to create a gallon of fuel from corn than was generated by burning it were dismissed. But as we devoted more and more of our food crops to energy production, we discovered yet again that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Science!) In this case, so-called environmentalist policies hurt the poor when the supply of corn and other grains fell, causing skyrocketing food prices and shortages that led to riots in undeveloped nations. At this writing, the European Union has just agreed to limit biofuels, for those reasons and also because they were found to make some engines run less efficiently, to cause more pollution than expected, and to harm the environment and contribute to global warming, due to the need for clear-cutting more farmland.

Huckabee’s professed skepticism about biofuels actually echoes the views shared by a number of conservative activists and environmentalists. But it diverges greatly from much of what he has said and written elsewhere. For example, here’s what Huckabee wrote in his 2007 book, From Hope to Higher Ground:

One energy source that makes perfect sense for America to aggressively explore and dramatically increase is the production and use of biofuels. The most common biofuels are ethanol and biodiesel, both of which have the potential of decreasing our dependence on oil, but could also have a dramatic and positive impact on America’s agricultural production. It could give our farmers the ability to feed and fuel us. While the cost of converting a biofuel source to usable fuel has been historically expensive and therefore not as attractive as gasoline, creating incentives with potential hefty financial rewards could be valuable in the production of ethanol and biodiesel. New technologies using forms of biomass are increasingly viable, and the production of these would be controlled within our own borders. An added advantage of biofuels is that unlike gasoline and conventional diesel, they contain oxygen, which allows petroleum products to burn more completely, reducing air pollution and cutting back on the buildup of greenhouse gases.

Huckabee reportedly backed the Renewable Fuel Standard during the 2008 campaign (although, in at least one debate, he appeared to reject the idea of biofuel mandates). At the time, his campaign website said that “we need more ethanol.”

This past March—less than two months after slamming biofuels in his book—Huckabee attended the Iowa Ag Summit in Des Moines, where spent 20 minutes answering questions posed by ethanol kingpin and GOP megadonor Bruce Rastetter. “You’ve been an unabashed supporter of the RFS,” Rastetter said.

“Yeah,” responded Huckabee, adding that the biofuel mandate was part of a “bigger picture of energy independence and energy security” that could help the United States “turn the tables” on Russia and Iran. He didn’t say anything about “skyrocketing food prices.” You can watch the exchange here:

Huckabee addressed the issue again at a May 7 campaign event in Sioux City, where he argued that ending government support for ethanol puts farmers and companies “out of business, and it destroys what is beginning to become a more reasonable, responsible, and economically viable industry.”

I asked Huckabee’s campaign how they reconcile the candidate’s campaign-trail biofuels boosterism with the sharp criticism leveled in his book. They didn’t respond.

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This Is Mike Huckabee’s Brain on Ethanol

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When You Binge-Watch "Mad Men," You Might Be Killing the Planet

by AndersoKellett Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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You recycle. You ride your bike to work. You bring your own bags to the grocery. You might think you’re a good environmentalist. But those cat videos, TED talks, and Netflix original series you watch to unwind might be slowly killing the planet.

That’s the word from Greenpeace’s latest Clicking Clean report, which evaluates the clean energy initiatives of many different internet companies.

While we’re used to thinking about our environmental impact in terms of how much trash we throw out, how much we drive, and how much electricity we use in our homes, the report highlights the ways that our internet usage has environmental effects that we never see.

Data center emissions account for small percentage of global emissions, Greenpeace information technology analyst Gary Cook tells us. That’s not much compared to 14 percent that goes towards agriculture or the 13 percent that goes to transportation. But data center emissions are growing by at least 13 percent per year, Cook says. And within two years, information technology in general, including manufacturing servers and other gear, is expected to account for between 7 and 12 percent of all electrical use, according the report.

Greenpeace

Data centers are expected to account for about 21 percent of that usage, mostly because of the explosive demand for streaming video. Cook explains that even though streaming can offset some emissions, such as the manufacture and delivery of DVDs or BluRay disks, the convenience of streaming is leading us to consume more content. Instead of buying a few videos and watching them again and again, we’re now binge-watching entire seasons of shows in a sitting, which ends up creating a bigger carbon footprint overall.

This trend extends to other industries as well. For example, according to the report, publishers now consume more energy as a result of their data center usage than they did through their use of printing presses.

There is good news in the report. Amazon, which hosts Netflix’s streaming service, and which has long been the tech industry’s renewable energy straggler, has finally pledged to go green. Apple has continued to adopt more green energy since Greenpeace singled out the company in 2011. In its latest report, the organization gave Apple “A” ratings in all four categories that it tracks: energy transparency; renewable energy commitment; energy efficiency; and renewable energy deployment and advocacy.

In fact, most major consumer-facing internet companies are now working towards using nothing but renewables. Business-to-business companies, such as colocation providers that rent data center space, are lagging behind, though Equinix, one of the largest in the country, has pledged to switch to all-renewable power. But any company seeking to ramp up its use of renewables is likely to run into a common problem: They need more electricity to meet rising demand for their services than they can get in a renewable form from utilities.

According to the report, many energy utilities, which generally have monopolies in their areas, only offer coal-generated power, or only sell renewable energy at a premium, despite renewable energy becoming as cheap, if not cheaper, than coal power in some cases.

That’s a big problem in Virginia, which sees as much as 70 percent of global internet traffic pass through its borders every day, and North Carolina, another hotbed for data centers.

Companies can seek more renewable power by building new data centers in states where more renewable energy is available, such as Iowa and Oregon, but Cook says it’s unrealistic to expect companies to move all of their existing data centers out of Virginia and North Carolina. That means these companies will need to work with activists and policy makers to pressure utility companies into making changes, he says.

“The IT sector has been very disruptive figuring out how to change pieces of the economy,” he says. “If the industry works together it can resist the economic power of the energy sector.”

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When You Binge-Watch "Mad Men," You Might Be Killing the Planet

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Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

by NataliaWarfield Posted on February 10, 2015

green4us

Members of Congress and a big utility are teaming up to raise that question. But experts think their concerns are overblown. Solar panels on the roof of a house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Darryl Webb/AP Back in December, a group of Republican members of Congress from Arizona and Texas sent a worried letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Solar panel companies, the letter claimed, might be using deceptive marketing practices to lease their rooftop systems to homeowners without fully disclosing the financial risks. The concerns were similar to those raised a month earlier by Democratic lawmakers—also from Arizona and Texas—in a letter sent to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Both letters raised the specter of serious problems in the business model of the country’s fastest-growing energy source. But as the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last month, the Republicans’ letter was originally drafted by an employee of Arizona Public Service, the state’s biggest electric utility and a long-time opponent of third-party solar companies. The draft was passed by APS to the office of Rep. Paul Gosar (R), which made a few changes, got the Congressman’s signature, and sent it off, according to AZCIR’s report. (The letter is here; the highlights were added by AZCIR to show where changes had been made from the original APS draft.) It’s not the first time APS has engaged in this type of secretive advocacy to undermine solar, an exploding industry that poses an existential threat to the old-school utility’s bottom line. In 2013, the company outed itself as the backer of two secretive nonprofits that ran an aggressive anti-solar ad campaign in the state. Back then, the company’s target was net metering, the policy that requires utility companies to buy excess electricity produced by its customers’ rooftop panels. Now APS’s focus appears to have shifted to the marketing practices of companies that lease solar panels to homeowners. “This is the next evolution in the utility playbook,” said Susan Glick, a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice, an advocacy group that represents some of the country’s biggest solar companies. APS wants “to demonize rooftop solar and ensure they have a monopoly,” she said. The cost of rooftop solar systems has plummeted in recent years. But some solar companies have realized that many homeowners are still unable to pay north of $10,000 to buy and install panels. Instead, the trendy option is solar leasing: A company installs panels on your roof for free and then charges you a monthly fee for the power they produce, which in theory is less than what you paid your electric utility. A recent industry survey found that about half of all residential solar systems are leased rather than owned. A spokesperson for Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D)—one of the authors of the Democratic letter—told Climate Desk that Kirkpatrick wanted to “take the lead” on the letter to the CFPB “after receiving numerous complaints about solar rooftop leasing practices in Arizona.” The spokesperson added that “any suggestion that the congresswoman issued the letter because of coercion by the utilities is false.” The APS-authored letter from Gosar and his GOP colleagues was more specific. It alleged that, as part of their rush to sign up customers before a federal tax credit expires, solar leasing companies have been overstating the savings that homeowners will receive. Neither Gosar’s office nor APS returned requests for comment. Both letters drew parallels between solar leasing and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which financial companies used shady lending practices to lure home buyers into mortgages they couldn’t really afford. It’s been a couple months now since the letters were fired off, and the response from the feds has been mixed. On Jan. 12 the CFPB responded to Kirkpatrick and her peers, writing that the agency is “currently studying a number of overlapping issues that may implicate the leasing of rooftop panels.” A CFPB spokesperson declined to elaborate on what exactly those issues are and whether these inquiries were instigated by Kirkpatrick’s letter. An FTC spokesperson said the agency had not yet taken any action on solar leasing. Back in Arizona, last month the state’s Corporation Commission opened a docket to collect preliminary information on solar leasing, with the possibility of a more thorough investigation in the future, a spokesperson said. So is the congressional prodding warranted, or just glorified lobbying for one freaked-out utility company? For all the noise, actual complaints against solar leasing companies seem to be relatively rare. According to the AZCIR report, Gosar’s chief of staff said he had not actually seen any complaints, and a spokesperson for Kirkpatrick “declined to answer questions about the quantity of reports, the way the reports reached their office, or to confirm that they reviewed any consumer complaints.” The Corporation Commission docket currently contains only one complaint, from a Scottsdale resident who claimed that “uneducated residents are bamboozled into these programs by unscrupulous businesses looking to make a quick buck.” That was essentially the complaint in a separate 2013 lawsuit against SunRun, a leading solar leasing company, brought by a California man who claimed he was misled about cost savings. SunRun denied the allegation, and that claim has since been dropped, the man’s law firm said. And a smattering of news outlets have reported cases of homeowners finding it more difficult than they expected to sell homes that are attached to a solar lease. But Travis Lowder, an energy finance analyst with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, said complaints like this tend to be rare, isolated incidents that don’t reflect systemic flaws with the solar leasing business model. Lowder runs a team that has spent the last several years developing standardized contracts and practices for solar leasing companies. “The solar industry has been very proactive on consumer protection laws,” Lowder said. “They don’t want to put the consumer in the position where the consumer is going to default, because they need that cash flow” to support the large up-front costs of solar installations on other roofs. The biggest issue, Lowder said, comes down the long lifespan of a typical solar lease: 20 years. Over that time scale, a solar lease ultimately amounts to thousands of dollars of debt taken on by homeowners. What’s more, most lease contracts include terms that gradually increase the monthly fees paid by homeowners over time. The pitch to customers is that the solar fee rate will escalate less than the cost of grid electricity. (Over the last decade, the average cost of electricity nationwide rose 36 percent.) The problem is that it’s practically impossible to make iron-clad predictions about cost savings that far in advance. Unforeseen changes to US energy policy or to a customer’s local electricity market, for example, could potentially reduce savings from solar over the grid, while homeowners remain locked in to their original contracts. Energy investors and analysts make those predictive calculations all the time, but always with a number of assumptions about future market conditions and an appreciation for the built-in uncertainty. So the challenge is communicating that uncertainty to customers. Solar leases “are certainly not risk-free,” said Nathanael Green, a renewables policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he said, the agitation from APS is “almost without a doubt a politically motivated attack.” “That doesn’t mean it’s all nonsense,” added Green. “You have to separate out some of the silliness from the real things we can do a better job of.” Either way, courts and state and federal regulators will now have a chance to weigh in. Because Arizona is among the country’s largest solar markets, with a colorful history of conflict between incumbent power companies and their renewable rivals, the outcome there could set the stage for how solar leasing is treated elsewhere. Nicholas Mack, the general counsel of solar financing company Clean Power Finance, has worked with NREL on developing best practices for solar leasing. The solar industry will be ready if the government comes knocking, he said: “I do think we can withstand the scrutiny.”

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Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

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Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

Posted in bamboo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, Scotts, solar, solar panels, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

Score one for ALEC: West Virginia is first state to repeal a renewable energy standard

by LynnePilkington Posted on February 5, 2015

Score one for ALEC: West Virginia is first state to repeal a renewable energy standard

By on 5 Feb 2015commentsShare

This week, West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) signed a bill repealing the state’s renewable energy standard, which would have required major utilities to get at least 25 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025.

It’s a clear win for right-wing activists, led by the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They’ve been campaigning for years to roll back state-level renewable standards, mostly without success. But last year, they managed to freeze Ohio’s renewable standard at a less-than-ambitious level. And now they’ve had their first total success — a complete rollback of a renewable portfolio standard.

Ironically, it was under Tomblin’s tenure as Senate president that the standard was first passed. The West Virginia Coal Association, an industry trade group, also supported the legislation back in 2009 — and even helped write it — but has since turned against it, citing increased regulation of the coal industry. “We understand economic drivers and factors change over time, and the Act as it was passed in 2009 is no longer beneficial for our state,” Tomblin said. (Politics also change: West Virginia, once a blue state, is becoming increasingly Republican, and environmental regulation has, since 2009, become even more anathema to the GOP. In the state legislature, Republicans have put bolstering the state’s coal industry’s high on their 2015 agenda.)

Clean energy is also under attack in Colorado, where this week the Republican-controlled state Senate advanced a bill to weaken that state’s renewable energy standard, though its chances in the Democratic-controlled House are not so hot. Legislators in Kansas, Ohio, and Oklahoma are considering cutting back their renewable energy standards too.

Meanwhile, ALEC et al. are trying to roll back state net-metering policies, which make it more affordable for homeowners to have rooftop solar arrays. A bill being considered in Indiana “would slash net metering credits and add fixed charges to the bills of solar customers,” Greentech Media reports. But in this case, solar fans have some right-wing backers of their own, led by Tea Party activist and solar advocate Debbie Dooley: “Indiana Republicans should be championing free-market choice — not government-created utility monopolies,” says Dooley. “This is a deliberate attempt to kill solar and protect monopolies from competition, and this is going on in other states.”

This year, you can expect state-level clean energy battles to just keep getting more heated.

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Score one for ALEC: West Virginia is first state to repeal a renewable energy standard

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Score one for ALEC: West Virginia is first state to repeal a renewable energy standard

Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

by DeannaColleano Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Clean energy investment around the world is rebounding after a three-year decline, according to new figures released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Globally, the total amount of clean energy investment jumped 16 percent in 2014, to $310 billion. That number is just shy of the record amount of investment set in 2011.

BNEF produces quarterly reports that track how much money governments and the private sector are pouring into wind, solar, biofuels and other green energy projects. In 2014, the United States enjoyed its biggest investments since 2012, but it was China that once again drove the numbers. China’s clean energy spending shot up 32 percent to a record $89.5 billion, cementing its place as the world’s top market for green investment. (You can get a sense of just how impressive Chinese investment is by peaking inside the the world’s biggest solar manufacturing factory, which is run by Chinese company Yingli.)

Solar is getting the lion’s share of investment around the world, according to the figures. Almost half the money spent on clean energy this year—just shy of $150 billion—was in the solar industry. Wind investment also reached record levels—$19.4 billion globally—thanks in part to offshore projects in Europe.

There was one darker patch in the numbers: Australia, where the government is trying to slash the country’s Renewable Energy Target, a policy that creates mandates for the amount of clean energy in the electricity mix. Bucking the global trend, investments there fell by 35 percent.

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Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

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The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

by Jeramy66Jmllpv Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

One World Trade Center, or the “Freedom Tower,” as it was formerly known, soars above New York City, finally filling a void left by the 9/11 terror attacks. The brilliant blue-silver facade glints no matter where you are in the city—nothing less than a “beacon of hope, just like the Statue of Liberty,” says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the site in a joint venture with real estate giant the Durst Organization.

The tower is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. And it’s also supposed to be one of the greenest—a first on its scale to aim for the US Green Building Council’s LEED gold certification, a coveted prize for sustainable building design. One World Trade Center features lighting that reacts to sunshine, rain harvesting, and a state-of-the-art onsite fuel cell installation, one of the largest of its kind in the world. In 2008, then-New York Gov. David A. Paterson praised this “space-age energy technology,” adding, “I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important.”

Then came Sandy.

A 26-page trove of internal documents obtained by Climate Desk from the Port Authority reveals for the first time a substantial hit to the project’s green ambitions: Superstorm Sandy caused critical damage to the World Trade Center’s $10.6 million clean-power sources—those world-class fuel cells—a third of which went unrepaired and unreplaced, in part because of a costly flaw in the main tower’s design, and pressure to honor a billion-dollar deal with Condé Nast, the global publishing powerhouse and high-profile anchor tenant.

What happened in the basement of One World Trade Center after Sandy is a previously untold—and as yet unresolved—chapter in the site’s redevelopment, already dogged by false starts, political squabbling, and cost overruns, involving some of the biggest names in New York City’s world of corporate real estate.

Breaking the Port Authority’s Green-Energy Promise?
In 2007, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency created in the aftermath of 9/11 to coordinate rebuilding efforts, introduced aggressive green standards for the Freedom Tower and its surrounding complex—”unprecedented in their scope and depth,” according to the building’s architects. The World Trade Center towers would be required to attain LEED gold certification, achieve net zero CO2 emissions (by purchasing green-energy credits), and operate with at least 20 percent more energy efficiency than the state’s current building code. “Every day is Earth Day at the World Trade Center,” claimed the Port Authority.

Another key requirement in the agreement was a fleet of fuel cells, which work by converting natural gas into electricity using an energy-efficient electrochemical process, rather than by burning it. They’re also cleaner because they don’t emit greenhouse gases or soot on location; the heat and water they generate as a byproduct can be used for cooling and heating the tower.

And so, in 2008, the Port Authority helped orchestrate a $10.6 million dollar deal with Connecticut’s UTC Power to provide nine fuel cells to supply power to three main towers at the site, including One World Trade. In Tower One, the fuel cells would provide up to 10 percent of the building’s electricity source, according to the fuel cell manufacturer; in towers Three and Four, they would supply a combined 30 percent.

Then, three years later, Sandy hit. Some 200 million gallons of water cascaded into the lower levels of the site, flooding the National September 11 Memorial Museum with at least five feet of water, according to the New York Times. What no media outlets reported, though, was that the flood also destroyed all nine fuel cells.

And while towers Three and Four now have new fuel cells, the main tower’s have never been replaced. The building opened without them—despite the fact that they were required in the original agreement.

So why didn’t the Port Authority replace the fuel cells? Evidence suggests that the reason had to do with financial pressure.

Pleasing High-Profile Tenants—and a Costly Design Flaw
In May 2011, the publishing giant Condé Nast signed a $2 billion deal to become the tower’s anchor tenant. Built into the terms of the lease was a move-in deadline: The Port Authority would be liable for penalties or lost earnings if Condé Nast was forced to wait beyond January 1, 2014, to begin the process of moving in. (Climate Desk contacted Condé Nast, but the company did not respond on the record.)

But the fuel cell disaster created the real possibility that the Port Authority and Durst were not going to make that deadline, a potential financial disaster. Part of the problem was a well-documented mistake in the building’s design: A temporary underground structure serving an existing train station was preventing builders from finishing the tower’s giant underground loading dock—the central piece of infrastructure used to haul masses of equipment up into the tower. Without the loading dock, there was no way for tenants to start moving their equipment into the building. And once a new loading dock went in—budgeted to cost $18.4 million—it would be all but impossible to remove and replace the dead fuel cells. Nevertheless, with the tight deadline, Port Authority decided to build the new loading dock. That meant the fuel cells had to come out fast—and finally, after several months, they did.

The Port Authority’s director of environmental and energy programs, Christopher Zeppie, warns of construction delays if the fuel cells aren’t removed in this March 2013 letter. Earlier, in December 2012, Zeppie told officials that “we need to get the damaged fuel cells out ASAP.”

Today, more than two years after Sandy, the new loading dock still blocks access to the one window through which the fuel cells could possibly be replaced. Durst admits in a statement to Climate Desk that “in order to replace the fuel cells that were destroyed by Super Storm Sandy, One World Trade Center’s interim loading dock needs to be disassembled,” but did not say if or when that might occur.

With no new fuel cells, the Port Authority needed to figure out how the main tower was going to reach the 20 percent energy efficiency goal stipulated in the rules. According to Durst, the building has now met the goal, but the company did not detail exactly how the building now makes up energy savings, except to say it “has been achieved through a number of means,” including the use of LED lighting. Focusing on the fuel cells is “missing the forest” for the trees, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Durst.

But that leaves a key part of the green deal in limbo: The rule that states that fuel cells must be built “into the towers.” Durst did not deny that the building was currently in a state of noncompliance with the original 2007 agreement. Neither the Port Authority nor Durst would confirm which organization in the joint venture is ultimately responsible for replacing the fuel cells. The Port Authority declined to be interviewed or to answer a series of questions for this story, instead referring us to Durst.

The 2007 environmental standards include the requirement to build fuel cells “into the towers.”

Richard Hankin, the director of 16 Acres, a documentary that charts the deeply convoluted progress at the site, says this confusion over who’s in charge of final sign off is typical of the site in general. “Over the years, the sheer size and complexity of the bureaucracy has often made it impossible to figure out who’s responsible for any given area or ultimate oversight,” he said.

Hankin found that complications at the World Trade Center stemmed from the tremendous number of invested parties—developers, architects, insurance companies, and victims’ groups—combined with the high turnover in top positions at the agencies responsible. “It’s that classic situation: The right arm is unaware of what the left arm is doing, compounded by the fact that it’s often a new left arm,” he said.

Future Questions About WTC’s LEED Certification
In addition to potentially flouting the original agreement, it remains unclear whether or not the fuel cell fiasco will undermine the tower’s LEED certification efforts. The US Green Building Council listed the gold certification as “projected” as recently as May 2014 in its magazine. But, says Marisa Long, the communications director at the US Green Building Council, “if the calculations for the LEED certification included a component like fuel cells, and damage to that component forces a change in calculations, the number of points earned to achieve LEED will be based on the new calculations.” Those calculations appear to be based on the original 2007 deal, which contains a variety of standards, not simply those concerning energy efficiency. Durst says it will still meet LEED gold certification.

Despite the setback for the building, those involved continue to publicly laud the project’s green cred. Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, opened the building earlier this month by saying the building “sets new standards of design, construction, prestige, and sustainability.” Kenneth A. Lewis, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, told the USGBC magazine: “We want to open it up and have the LEED plaque on the door.”

While there’s still time to get the building across the line, Lewis’ hope for a grand LEED-certified opening has vanished. For now, the doors are wide open, without the plaque, and without a clear solution to the alternative energy demands of the tower.

“If one thing is delayed or goes wrong, it very much has a domino effect with all the other parts,” Hankin said. “It can result in a lot of finger-pointing.”

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The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

Posted in alternative energy, Anchor, Cascade, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

Walmart isn’t really green, just really big

by ArielO42brir Posted on October 24, 2014

Always low standards. Always.

Walmart isn’t really green, just really big

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24 Oct 2014 1:32 PM

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Walmart isn’t really green, just really big

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Please don’t mistake Walmart’s bigness for greenness. Thank you.

On Tuesday, Slate proclaimed that “Walmart is killing the rest of corporate America in solar power adoption” because the company leads the nation in total “installed capacity” — in essence, it has installed more solar panels than anyone else. In reality, Wally World is a greenwashed clean-energy laggard owned by a family that funds anti-solar groups.

Slate’s data, which shows that Walmart has more than double the megawatts than second-place Kohl’s, comes from the Solar Energy Industry Association, a U.S. trade group. But in that same report, Walmart ranked 11th (out of an undisclosed list of megacorporations) in the proportion of facilities with solar power, at just 5 percent. (For comparison, a small business with one facility and one solar installation would score 100 on that test.)

In all, solar, wind, and biomass accounts for just 3 percent of Walmart’s total U.S. electricity use, according to data from the EPA’s Green Power Partnership. And less than one-fifth of the renewable energy the company purchases from offsite is third-party certified, meaning we just have to take Walmart’s word for it. More than 200 organizations in the EPA program meet 100 percent of their electricity use with green sources, including fellow retail giants Whole Foods, Staples, and Kohl’s.

“The idea that Walmart is a major driver behind the growth of solar is pretty ludicrous,” says Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Last year, Walmart installed about 16 megawatts of solar power. Homeowners installed about 800 megawatts of solar power,” according to this report.

Then there’s the Walton family, Walmart’s majority owner, which is actively undermining renewables. A recent report from ILSR finds that family members have donated nearly $4.5 million to two dozen organizations — including the infamous lobbying outfit ALEC — that lead the charge against clean energy policy.

The family actually owns a company called Solar First, that builds big arrays for big utilities. But while that may seem like a good thing, it means that the Waltons want us all to remain captive utility customers, not produce our own power. The family has worked to block rooftop solar, even scoring a tiny victory in Arizona last year. It’s a typical family strategy: Walmart tried to pay workers in Mexico with store vouchers.

Solar First, which manufactures its panels mostly in Malaysia, is even working via through the World Trade Organization — the enforcer of globalized free-marketism — to repeal solar incentives in several U.S. states simply because those policies give preference to local producers. Thanks, Walton clan.

In short, the super-rich Waltons and their exorbitantly profitable superstore empire won’t spend an extra dime on green energy if it means foregoing all-out profit maximization. The company’s 2013 Global Responsibility Report apologizes for a decline in renewable energy use thusly: “Walmart U.S. was unable to renegotiate an expiring [renewable power] contract with competitive pricing.”

Money above social responsibility. It’s the Walmart way!

Source:
Walmart Is Killing the Rest of Corporate America in Solar Power Adoption

, Slate.

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Walmart isn’t really green, just really big

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In Just 15 Years, Wind Could Provide A Fifth Of The World’s Electricity

by DorethaRoden Posted on October 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Up to one fifth of the world’s electricity supply could come from wind turbines by 2030, according to a new report released this week by Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). That would be an increase of 530 percent compared to the end of last year.

The report says the coming global boom in wind power will be driven largely by China’s rebounding wind energy market—and a continued trend of high levels of Chinese green energy investment—as well as by steady growth in the United States and new large-scale projects in Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa.

The report, called the “Global Wind Energy Outlook,” explains how wind energy could provide 2,000 gigawatts of electricity by 2030, which would account for 17 to 19 percent of global electricity. And by 2050, wind’s share of the electricity market could reach 30 percent. That’s a huge jump from the end of 2013, when wind provided around 3 percent of electricity worldwide.

The report is an annually produced industry digest co-authored by the GWEC, which represents 1,500 wind power producers. It examines three “energy scenarios” based on projections used by the International Energy Agency. The “New Policies” scenario attempts to capture the direction and intentions of international climate policy, even if some of these policies have yet to be fully implemented. From there, GWEC has fashioned two other scenarios—”moderate” and “advanced”—which reflect two different ways nations might cut carbon and keep their commitments to global climate change policies. In the most ambitious scenario, “advanced,” wind could help slash more than 3 billion tons of climate-warning carbon dioxide emissions each year. The following chart has been adapted and simplified from the report:

In the best case scenario, China leads the way in 2020 and in 2030:

But as the report’s authors note, there is still substantial uncertainty in the market. “There is much that we don’t know about the future,” they write, “and there will no doubt be unforeseen shifts and shocks in the global economy as well as political ups and downs.” The more optimistic results contained in the report are dependent on whether the global community is going to respond “proactively to the threat of climate change, or try to do damage control after the fact,” the report says.

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In Just 15 Years, Wind Could Provide A Fifth Of The World’s Electricity

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A Place With the Population of West Virginia Just Powered A Work Day Entirely on Clean Energy

by LatriceVaught Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s one for the naysayers who insist renewable energy can’t keep the lights on and power our cities. An entire state in Australia with a population of around 1.7 million people just used renewable energy to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs throughout an entire working day. According to industry news site Energy Business News:

Between 9.30 and 6pm on Tuesday, September 30, a day not unlike most Tuesdays, with business and homes using electricity as usual, the state received the favourable weather conditions allowing solar and wind infrastructure to work side by side to achieve the impressive achievement.

The analysis comes from Pitt & Sherry, an Australian energy consultancy. As the wind picked up, all but two of the state’s coal-fired power generators, and one gas-powered unit, were shut down; the excess power was exported to other regions, according to the report. There were a few moments during the previous days—on September 27 and 28—when the state actually produced more wind power than the state’s total energy demand. Normally, nearly a third of the state’s energy comes from renewable sources, according to figures from 2012 to 2013.

South Australia, home to the city of Adelaide, has almost half of the country’s wind capacity; 25 percent of its households have rooftop solar installations, according to the report. The state is aggressively pursuing green energy goals, upping its 2025 renewable energy commitment from 33 percent to 50 percent, having met its previous goal six years ahead of schedule.

This is despite the conservative federal government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott threatening to gut a national renewable energy target, having already defunded several government agencies responsible for the country’s climate change policies. In July, Australia became the world’s first developed nation to repeal a carbon tax.

All of that policy uncertainty is having an impact on the renewable energy sector in Australia. Investment has virtually frozen in a land famous for being bathed in sun. Recent data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows Australia is on track to record its lowest level of financing for big renewable projects since 2002, dropping the country from the 11th largest investor to 31st in Bloomberg’s rankings. In the third quarter of this year, investment was down 78 percent from the same time last year.

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A Place With the Population of West Virginia Just Powered A Work Day Entirely on Clean Energy

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Why Scotland’s Independence Vote Matters for Climate Change

by Susie Quan Posted on September 17, 2014

Mother Jones

As you’ve no doubt seen by now, Scottish voters are heading to the polls to decide whether to break free from the United Kingdom and chart an independent course for the first time in 307 years. A record number of voters are expected to turn out—97 percent of the adult population, or more than 4.2 million people, are registered. Rugged, remote and sparsely populated as the country is, the actual ballots will take some time to be trucked, boated, helicoptered and fully counted: Results are likely to come in early Friday morning, US time.

One of the big unknowns if Scotland votes “Yes” is what will happen to the UK’s climate and energy goals. The countries are interconnected and interdependent, relying on each other’s infrastructure (the wires, the interchanges, everything) and resources (oil, gas and wind) to power their economies. How that pie gets carved up remains a source of debate and confusion.

Here’s what we know (and what we don’t know) about what will happen to Scotland and the UK’s energy mix and their ability to reach renewable energy targets and to combat climate change if the two go their separate ways.

Will the UK still be able to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables if Scotland leaves?

Scotland produces a lot of green energy. It generates over a third of the UK’s renewable electricity, according to the latest government numbers. Carbon Brief, a London group that tracks climate policy, says that Scotland provides 43 percent of the UK’s wind capacity and 92 percent of its hydroelectric power. So, in theory, losing Scottish energy sources would make the power supply for the rest of the UK “less green,” the group says. That could be especially problematic given that European Union rules will require the UK to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.

“Without the windier onshore and offshore conditions in Scotland, the rest of the UK’s ability to meet the target might diminish significantly,” says Simon Moore, a senior research fellow at Policy Exchange, a think tank in London. But that may not actually happen. Moore thinks it’s likely that even if Scotland becomes independent, its energy market will remain tied to the UK’s. “Odds are that an independent Scotland and the remainder England and Wales would continue to operate an integrated electricity market—similar to the ‘Single Electricity Market‘ that is shared by the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland,” he explains.

Still, Moore warns that it’s far too early to know how this issue will be ultimately decided. “No decision has been made—and I doubt any more than preliminary thinking has begun—on how the target might be divided up if Scotland leaves,” he says.

Who will pay for Scotland’s green energy sector if the UK stops subsidizing it?

Scotland’s renewable energy development is subsidized by the entire United Kingdom—to the tune of £560 million (nearly $913 million) in the most recent tax year, according to Bloomberg. If the UK puts a stop to those subsidies—as it appears to be threatening to do—Scotland would have to get that money from somewhere else.

According to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, Scotland would need to spend £1.8 billion (nearly $3 billion) to meet it’s goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2020. Without the UK subsidies, the British government warns that the additional burden could be partly carried by Scottish rate payers. “Our analysis shows that Scottish consumers are up to £189 ($309) better off in the UK as the broad shoulders of the Union allow us to spread energy costs more evenly,” a department spokesperson said, as quoted by the BBC.

DECC Secretary Ed Davey said in April that the rest of the UK would not have to “support an independent Scottish state’s energy costs to ensure its own security of supply.”

The Scottish “Yes” campaign counters that they’ll be able to work out a deal that benefits both countries, with the UK continuing to fund renewable energy north of the border and, in return, importing some of that low-carbon electricity, according to Carbon Brief. Again, we’ll have to wait and see.

Is North Sea oil and gas really the key to Scotland’s economic independence?

The North Sea has been a source of oil and gas for the UK for four decades. The “Yes” movement argues that those resources will help ensure the financial security of an independent Scotland. According to Carbon Brief, the Scottish government says it would be entitled to 90 percent of future North Sea oil and gas tax revenue, and this has been a central feature of the “Yes” campaign.

“The reality is North Sea oil and gas will be with us way beyond 2050,” Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and the face of the “Yes” campaign, said during a televised debate. “Every other country in Europe would give its eye teeth to have North Sea oil and gas. It cannot be regarded as anything other than a substantial asset for Scotland.”

But the amount of money Scotland can get from the sea is highly disputed. “The ‘Yes’ campaign estimates revenues from the North Sea in 2018 to be twice as large as the UK government does,” Moore said. And what’s more, he adds, the oil and gas field is in “sharp decline.”

“The UK has gone from 100 percent self-sufficient to around 50 percent domestic gas production in less than a decade,” Moore said. “There may be some scope to develop new fields or scrape a few more drops out of old ones here and there as technology improves, but the broad trend is one of declining production volumes.”

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Why Scotland’s Independence Vote Matters for Climate Change

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