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Bikes created 655,000 jobs in Europe

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Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged 000-jobs, amsterdam, bicycle, business & technology, city, g & f, guardian, lai, Ona, study | Comments Off

No, Obama’s carbon limits won’t mean massive power outages

by KennithKyngdon Posted on November 12, 2014

No, Obama’s carbon limits won’t mean massive power outages

By Sam Bliss

12 Nov 2014 1:36 PMShare

No, Obama’s carbon limits won’t mean massive power outages

The overseer of our electric grid is warning that the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan poses a threat to the dependability of our power systems. Queue the ominous music and prepare for rolling blackouts? Not so fast. Other energy experts say there’s really nothing to worry about — except for, you know, climate chaos.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a not-for-profit regulatory authority in charge of keeping the juice flowing, suspects that the EPA is overly optimistic about how quickly we can transform the grid by shutting down coal plants, increasing efficiency, and building massive gas, wind, and solar infrastructure. From an initial review it released last week:

The proposed timeline does not provide enough time to develop sufficient resources to ensure continued reliable operation of the grid by 2020. To attempt to do so would increase the use of controlled load shedding and potential for wide-scale, uncontrolled outages.

“Wide-scale, uncontrolled outages”?!?! Sounds pretty dire. But it turns out that NERC has a history of fear-mongering, issuing periodic warnings that shuttering coal plants will bring blackouts.

Here’s one reason why NERC’s analysis is balderdash: It leaves out the growing contributions of wind and solar. Yes, that’s right. In assessing the effects of a policy designed specifically to encourage carbon reductions, the report acknowledges that wind and solar electricity will increase, and yet doesn’t count these additions in calculating the total amount of power the grid can deliver.

The Union of Concerned Scientists contrasts the preliminary NERC report with a more rigorous study on the impacts of transforming Minnesota’s electricity system away from fossil fuels toward renewables. This evaluation was also performed by an organization responsible for grid reliability, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. Turns out, when contributions from renewables, energy efficiency, and boring demand response are considered — and transmission needs are thoroughly analyzed rather than assumed to be insurmountable — a concrete plan emerges for reliably providing 40 percent of the state’s electricity with wind and solar.

The EPA itself certainly isn’t buying the NERC report. “There are a lot of assertions and claims in the report that aren’t really substantiated by any particular analytics they mention, or supported by a deeper look into the issues,” said one agency staff member made available for comment on condition of namelessness, in response to questions from Greenwire. For example, NERC assumes that all states will take the same approach in complying with the Clean Power Plan’s mandates, but in reality the proposed EPA rules give states extensive flexibility to craft strategies that suit their own power systems.

The mainstream media missed it, but beyond NERC’s dismal bullet-point summary, the report actually also offers some quality recommendations for how regional electricity groups can come to understand what needs to be done to meet the EPA rules, and partner with policy makers to address areas of concern. The report was entitled “Potential reliability impacts of the proposed EPA Clean Power Plan,” but John Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council suggests a more positive title: “Working together, states and grid operators can strengthen reliability and cut carbon pollution.”

Yes, reliability is an important issue as we convert our energy systems to run without fossil fuels. But Seattle-based climate policy wonk KC Golden pointed out in an email that the bigger threat is to the reliability of the United States as a global leader and partner in the run-up to big U.N. climate talks in Paris in 2015. To say nothing of threats to the reliability of food and water supplies in a warming world.

And remember: Most power outages are caused by extreme weather events. So perhaps the biggest threat to the reliability of our electric grid is the increasing number of strong storms that climate change itself causes. Ultimately, the risk of not meeting the Clean Power Plan’s emissions-reduction deadlines are much worse than the risks posed by a speedy grid overhaul.

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Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged business & technology, climate & energy, count, electric, energy, nerc, obama, paris, politics, reliability, u.s. epa | Comments Off

Surprise: Biodegradable plastic bags usually aren’t

by MyraWetter Posted on November 1, 2014

Surprise: Biodegradable plastic bags usually aren’t

By Sam Bliss

31 Oct 2014 8:47 PM

Surprise: Biodegradable plastic bags usually aren’t

Reducing waste is hard. Who really knows what packaging is safe to recycle or compost when labeling standards are weak, companies regularly get away with green fraud, and seemingly every city has a different sorting game to play with bins? Straightforward rules and enforceable standardization would certainly go a long way toward clearing things up.

Even with the confusion, most people agree plastic bags suck. Perhaps sensing that we’re finally catching on, plastic bag makers have unleashed the greenwashers to make tiny changes to their product (like add a little metal) and then make up stories about how the “new” bags just disappear like magic.

In 2010, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposed some recommendations for environmental marketing claims. Since then, the market-regulating agency has actually started actively eradicating eco-bullshit.

Last year, the FTC cracked down on unsubstantiated claims of “biodegradable” and “compostable” bags. The Guardian’s Circular Economy series updates us on the latest distorted marketing word, “oxodegradable”:

Last month, the FTC sent warning letters to 15 additional marketers, informing them that their claims “may be deceptive”. The FTC also requested “competent and reliable scientific evidence proving that their bags will biodegrade as advertised”. This time, the term of offense is “oxodegradable”, implying the bag will break down in time when exposed to oxygen.

Though the names of the companies have not been released by the FTC, all are said to market traditional plastic products that have been amended with additives –metals, typically – intended to break the bags down in the presence of oxygen. As many bags are dumped in the low-oxygen environment of a landfill, the FTC has said those advertised benefits are dubious.

More to the point, isn’t the goal of making biodegradable products that they don’t have to go in a landfill at all? Food scraps are super biodegradable, and that’s why they go in the green bin or a compost pile. Biodegrading into nutritious soil in the landfill is worthless.

In the Guardian piece, sustainable manufacturing expert Joseph Greene, a professor at California State University, Chico, points out that “oxodegradable” should be amended to “oxofragmentable” to be more accurate.

Plastics just break into smaller and smaller pieces. Chemically, they haven’t been broken down into anything less hazardous. In fact, if these plastic bags disintegrate in the ocean, they’ll surely be just about the right size for small animals to mistake them for plankton.

The plastic bag industry shouldn’t feel too threatened by the trend toward BYOBag to the grocery store: We still sack up our produce and bulk items in 100 billion plastic bags a year. States and cities are launching plastic bag bans left and right, but those are baby steps at best. Even when cities “ban” plastic bags, what do shoppers put their fruits and veggies in? Plastic bags. To make a real dent, we may have to wait for Plastic Bag Ban 2.0 — a rule that applies to more than the checkout line.

Source:
Feds warn plastic bag makers over misleading biodegradable claim

, The Guardian.

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Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged biodegradable, business & technology, ftc, guardian, king, lai, plastic bag ban, product, state, university, unsubstantiated claims | Comments Off

These wearable air monitors fight pollution from the streets

by KristyEZTL Posted on October 31, 2014

These wearable air monitors fight pollution from the streets

By Amelia Urry

31 Oct 2014 5:21 PM

These wearable air monitors fight pollution from the streets

Here’s a Kickstarter that got our attention this month: The AirBeam, a wearable air monitor designed by Brooklyn-based environmental justice nonprofit HabitatMaps. The device costs $200 to produce, fits in your palm (if you’re Sasquatch), and is designed to measure particulate pollution on city streets, as well as temperature and humidity. It’s also kinda adorable — which is good, considering that the group is counting on hundreds of people wearing them around NYC in the near future.

But don’t let those cute blue Mickey ears fool you — the AirBeam is a response to a very real problem: Air pollution costs the U.S. $78 billion a year, HabitatMaps claim on their Kickstarter page:

The negative impacts of air pollution rank it among the most serious and widespread human health hazards in the world. Breathing dirty air causes chronic illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis and contributes to terminal illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, despite the very real impacts air pollution has on our every day lives, it often goes unnoticed because it is largely invisible. In addition, because government-run air quality monitoring networks are sparse, publicly available air quality measurements don’t translate into an accurate assessment of personal exposure. The answer? Low-cost, portable air quality instruments.

Most official air monitoring occurs well above street level, where the air tends to be cleaner. The AirBeam monitors — once fully deployed by a team of citizen scientists — will measure pollution where it counts: where you actually breathe it. From GigaOm:

Michael Heimbinder, executive director at HabitatMaps, said that the nonprofit had developed the cheapest, portable air quality monitoring sensor it could in hopes of gathering data that it can then use to make policy arguments in the city. It’s also helpful for individuals who may want to change their own habits.

That is, if you know that levels of air pollution are pretty bad at a certain time and place on your commute, you might be able to tinker with your habits to limit your own exposure. But the real solutions will come from the sum total of all the data — cities will be able to identify hot spots for pollution, and then (er, hopefully) be better equipped to address them.

If you pledge $200, you’ll get an AirBeam of your own come launch — and a healthy dose of civic engagement to boot.

Source:
See how a Brooklyn nonprofit is using the internet of things for environmental justice

, GigaOm.

AirBeam: Share & Improve Your Air

, Kickstarter.

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Posted in Anchor, Citizen, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged breathing, business & technology, city, device, nyc, Ona, oxo, share, solar power, unfortunately, world | Comments Off

Funding evil lobbying group was “a mistake,” says Google

by MiguelMulquin Posted on September 23, 2014

Funding evil lobbying group was “a mistake,” says Google

By Sara Bernard

22 Sep 2014 8:14 PM

Funding evil lobbying group was “a mistake,” says Google

Here’s one corporate irony, (mostly) rectified: Google chair Eric Schmidt just announced the company’s intention to stop funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a notorious lobbying group that pushes all kinds of anti-climate and anti-clean-energy legislation.

ALEC’s corporate board includes representatives of Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries and its pet politicians include major climate change deniers. Google and Facebook reps have thus had a tough time explaining their companies’ involvement with ALEC.

Google, for one, invests a lot in clean energy and totes around the slogan “Don’t be evil.” The company’s support for ALEC has been a little confusing.

From ThinkProgress:

In an interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, Schmidt said the free-market lobbying group’s anti-climate and anti-clean energy positions are harmful to future generations, and a bad investment idea for the company.

“Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place,” Schmidt said. “And so we should not be aligned with such people — they’re just, they’re just literally lying.”

Schmidt’s statement arrived two weeks after 50 organizations sent a letter to Google headquarters, imploring the tech giant to leave ALEC.

But Forecast the Facts, a climate action group that led a “Don’t Fund Evil” campaign against Google’s ALEC membership last year, claims Google still has $699,195 in the pockets of congressional climate change deniers. And as Think Progress reports, Schmidt “did not say that Google had officially cut ties with the group” — he just said the company “consensus” was that investment with ALEC was a “mistake.”

But hey, if the Rockefellers can pull their money from the oil industry, there’s gotta be hope for Google, too.

Source:
Google Chairman: ALEC Is Lying About Climate Change And Funding Them Was A Mistake

, Think Progress.

Google drops ALEC!

, Daily Kos.

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Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

by LashawnJudy Posted on September 16, 2014

That’s fracked up!

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

By Eve Andrews

16 Sep 2014 5:32 PM

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

In bizarre energy industry news of the day, the North Carolina Energy Coalition seems to have brought in some homeless men to stand in as fracking supporters at a state hearing on developing fracking operations in the state.

The men were bussed 200 miles from Winston-Salem to Cullowhee, N.C., where the hearing took place, for the day.

From Asheville’s Citizen-Times:

“They were clueless,” said Bettie “Betsy” Ashby, a member of the Jackson County Coalition Against Fracking. “At least two of them I met definitely came from a homeless shelter. One of them even apologized to me and said, ‘I didn’t know they were trying to do this to me.’ One said, ‘I did it for the…’ and then he rubbed his fingers together like ‘for the money.’”

Several of the men were wearing turquoise shirts or hats that said “Shale Yes” on the front and “Energy Creates Jobs” and “N.C. Energy Coalition.com” on the back.

It’s not a new tactic: If you can’t find people who actually support your cause, just pay uninformed members of underprivileged groups to fake it!

What is the mission of the N.C. Energy Coalition, exactly? From the group’s website:

Our website will provide the facts about the offshore and onshore production processes, environmental issues and economic impacts with no political spin. The Coalition will not advocate on issues but instead, provide the facts to let the public, business community and elected officials decide for themselves.

The organization is also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute.

Just this June, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed off on the legalization of fracking in the state. At the same time, the state also passed a bill that makes the disclosure of the ingredients in the chemical cocktail used in fracking punishable as a misdemeanor. (For what it’s worth, the originally proposed version of that bill would have made said disclosure a felony.)

I’d be interested, at the very least, to know if the N.C. Energy Coalition will help its paid protestors to get actual jobs at the state’s new fracking wells. Because that’s supposed to be the huge benefit of this “energy boom,” right? I guess a few bucks an hour and a bus ride to Cullowhee is a good place to start!

Source:
Did energy group bus homeless in to support fracking?

, Citizen-Times.

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