Tag Archives: business & technology

Tesla abandons its patents, aims to spur electric-car revolution

by AlenaBowie Posted on June 12, 2014

It’s open season

Tesla abandons its patents, aims to spur electric-car revolution

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Tesla

Tesla, maker of the most critically acclaimed car ever, is going open source.

Every patent that the Silicon Valley electric-car pioneer has ever secured will now be available for any company in the world to use, free of charge.

“Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a blog post published Thursday. “Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

“Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. … We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform,” he wrote.

Following a conference call with Musk, The Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of patents, covering everything from batteries to electric control systems, would be affected, helping to spur growth in an industry in which Tesla is a global leader.

Mr. Musk also hinted at another reason for the offer: achieving greater economies of scale. For example, Tesla’s patents for its vehicle Supercharging stations could be shared with other auto makers, which could help Tesla spread costs and more quickly make more stations available.

More manufacturers should use small battery cells, as Tesla does, Mr. Musk said. “That would be one thing I would recommend.” He has outlined plans to build a large battery factory, which he calls the gigafactory, to produce more battery packs in the U.S.

Tesla has “several hundred” patents related to all areas of its electric vehicles, Mr. Musk said, including batteries and electric control systems. Tesla isn’t worried a competitor could use its patents to undercut the company, he said.

Tesla’s business model doesn’t just emphasize the manufacture and sale of electric cars. The company is also a major producer of electric-vehicle components used by other manufacturers. Thursday’s announcement could help competitors move in on those sales, but Tesla apparently feels confident enough in its own capabilities to embrace, rather than fear, that potential threat.

“Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers,” Musk wrote in his post. “We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”


Source
All Our Patent Are Belong To You, Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors Offers Open Licenses to Its Patents, The Wall Street Journal

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Tesla abandons its patents, aims to spur electric-car revolution

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Obama gears up for his big climate move

by JanelleBussell Posted on May 31, 2014

Obama gears up for his big climate move

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President Obama is about to launch the biggest climate change initiative of his presidency — the biggest in U.S. history — and it’s not because he’s a tree-hugging hippie. As he lays the groundwork for introducing landmark regulations on power-plant CO2 emissions on Monday, he “wants to shift the conversation from polar bears and melting glaciers to droughts in Iowa and more childhood asthma across the nation,” as Bloomberg reports.

He pushed that message home in his weekly video address on Saturday:

I’m here at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., visiting with some kids being treated here all the time for asthma and other breathing problems. Often, these illnesses are aggravated by air pollution — pollution from the same sources that release carbon and contribute to climate change. And for the sake of all our kids, we’ve got to do more to reduce it. …

This week, we’re unveiling … proposed guidelines [that] will cut down on the carbon pollution, smog, and soot that threaten the health of the most vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly. In just the first year that these standards go into effect, up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided — and those numbers will go up from there.

On Friday, Obama linked climate change to the storms and weather disruptions that Americans are already seeing in their hometowns, echoing the message of the big climate report that his administration put out in early May. During a meeting at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, he said:

The changes we’re seeing in our climate means that, unfortunately, storms like Sandy could end up being more common and more devastating. And that’s why we’re also going to be doing more to deal with the dangers of carbon pollution that help to cause this climate change and global warming.

Earlier in the week, in a big speech on his foreign policy agenda, the president warned that climate change is also “a creeping national security crisis.”

Yep, no polar bear mentions.

Obama has not gotten into specifics about the forthcoming regulations — we’ll have to wait for Monday for the details — but, in his address on Saturday, he did warn Americans not to believe the dirty-energy interests that are preemptively bashing the regs.

Now, special interests and their allies in Congress will claim that these guidelines will kill jobs and crush the economy. Let’s face it, that’s what they always say.

But every time America has set clear rules and better standards for our air, our water, and our children’s health — the warnings of the cynics have been wrong. …

These excuses for inaction somehow suggest a lack of faith in American businesses and American ingenuity. The truth is, when we ask our workers and businesses to innovate, they do. When we raise the bar, they meet it. …

In America, we don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children. The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technology to break the old rules.

The fossil fuel industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will paint the proposed regulations as environmental extremism run amuck. Obama and his allies will argue that climate action is needed to protect things mainstream Americans care about deeply — their health, the economy, national security, their very homes.

It’s not about dirty fucking hippies. It’s about organic apple pie.

Watch his Saturday address:


Source
Climate Change Meets Kitchen Table as Issue Gets Personal, Bloomberg
Obama warns of ‘devastating’ hurricanes from climate change, The Hill

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Obama gears up for his big climate move

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Koch brothers get rolling on their first tar-sands project

by ColumbusReilly Posted on May 27, 2014

Koch brothers get rolling on their first tar-sands project

By

Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

The Koch brothers are currently right on track to become the most dangerous senior citizens in the North American nonrenewable energy game. Considering that that particular arena is currently dominated – as are most lucrative yet morally fraught industries – by white men with Cialis prescriptions, that’s saying something.

In March, it was revealed that Chuck and Dave had quietly acquired leases for between 1.1 and 2 million acres of tar-sands land in Alberta. That makes them one of the largest tar-sands leaseholders in Canada. “Maybe they were planning on converting that property into a lovely nature preserve,” said exactly no one. Surprise, no one! Koch Industries’ Canadian arm, Koch Oil Sands Operating LLC, has started to make arrangements to drill on that land.

The project, slated to begin construction in 2016, is expected to cost $2.2 billion, and would produce 60,000 barrels of tar-sands oil per day starting in 2018.

And that’s just the start. Roxanne Rees, media representative for Koch Oil Sands, confirmed to the Vancouver Observer that the company has other projects in nascent stages of development.

Canada, we are truly sorry to share one of our national plagues with you. And for every moron who may be thinking otherwise: Charles and David Koch are significantly worse than Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne, and Chad Kroeger combined, so this does not make us even.


Source
Koch brothers’ company files to develop oil sands project, The Globe and Mail
Koch brothers’ Canadian company moves to exploit oil sands gold rush, Vancouver Observer

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Koch brothers get rolling on their first tar-sands project

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Billions of barrels of new reasons to not frack California

by GraigWYNhldpon Posted on May 22, 2014

Billions of barrels of new reasons to not frack California

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Shutterstock

The health, environmental, and climate impacts of fracking haven’t been enough to convince California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to curb the process. Even as Brown urges California restaurants to limit servings of water to help conserve during a drought, oil drillers are gearing up to use the water-hungry practice of fracking to suck more crude out of the vast Monterey shale deposit.

But now the federal government has drastically downgraded its estimate of the amount of oil that could be fracked from the deposit, spurring environmentalists to demand yet again, and even more loudly, that Brown support a fracking moratorium in the state.

First, here’s an explanation of the downgrade from KQED:

Federal officials with the Energy Information Administration are reportedly downgrading their estimate of how much oil could be pumped out of the formation. Just a few years ago, the agency projected that oil companies could retrieve 15 billion barrels of oil. Now, it’s down to 600 million.

Just to clarify: these numbers don’t reflect how much oil is underground in California. Most geologists agree that there’s still plenty down there. The EIA is attempting to estimate how much could be pumped out with current technology.

Environmentalists quickly seized on the news. They didn’t want that oil drilled to begin with, and now that much of it may not be extractable, they argue that fracking would be even more wasteful than previously thought. “The myth of vast supplies of domestic oil resources and billions in potential revenue from drilling in California by the oil industry has been busted,” San Francisco billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer told the San Jose Mercury News.

Here are highlights from a letter that a coalition of environmentalists called Californians Against Fracking sent to Brown on Wednesday:

We urge you to move quickly to halt fracking and other dangerous oil-recovery methods in California in the wake of today’s news that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will be reducing their estimate of the amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale by 96 percent. …

The EIA’s massively revised estimate for what is currently recoverable is a perfect illustration of the dangerous uncertainty surrounding fracking for oil. On the other hand, what is clear is that fracking, acidizing and other oil extraction techniques are putting Californians at risk today. Communities urgently need protection from fracking and drilling and we are looking to you to provide leadership and relief to these communities.

It seems disingenuous for Brown to tell residents to reduce their water use while allowing frackers to operate in their water-wasteful ways — and that disconnect only grows more glaring with the news that fracking won’t even deliver the oily goods that he had been hoping for.


Source
California’s Monterey Shale: Bonanza or Bust? Nobody Really Knows, KQED
Fracking: New Monterey Shale oil estimate rocks California’s expectations, San Jose Mercury News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Billions of barrels of new reasons to not frack California

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Enviros bash industry-backed “green” building program

by PearleneN53 Posted on May 14, 2014

LEED it ain’t

Enviros bash industry-backed “green” building program

By

Wonderlane

Not every building that looks green actually is.

Corporations that stand to lose the most from a widespread shift toward genuine green building practices are doing what they can to preserve the status quo. For years they’ve been smearing LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, the nation’s preeminent green building certification program. They have lobbied lawmakers to ban the use of LEED certifications for government buildings — and they have succeeded in some states, such as in Maine. And they’ve cooked up their own green-building certification program: Green Globes.

The Sierra Club and Greenpeace are now counterattacking. They’ve launched a new initiative, Greenwash Action, to expose the forces behind Green Globes. From a Greenwash Action report:

Green Globes is a creature of the chemical, plastics and conventional timber industries. It is being peddled as a cheaper and easier alternative to the better-known LEED green building rating system, and claims to deliver the same environmental results. But if you really want to understand Green Globes, you need to know who’s behind it.

Green Globes is administered by an organization called the Green Building Initiative (GBI). Not only have the chemical, plastics and timber industries stacked GBI’s board of directors, their relative handful of “members and supporters” are mostly entities from the same industries that pay-to-play as much as $50,000 a year. These include trade associations and lobbying groups like the American Forest & Paper Association, The Vinyl Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the Society of the Plastics Industry that are themselves funded by the huge and powerful corporations whose interests underlie Green Globes and drive its agenda.

Lloyd Alter of Treehugger, who has been tracking the attacks on LEED for years, says the environmentalists’ efforts to defend LEED “will be an uphill struggle.”

“I wish Greenwash Action had a larger backing than just Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, who will be immediately labelled as lefty treehuggers,” he writes. “But somebody has to do this.”


Source
A closer look at Green Globes, Greenwash Action
Greenwash Action fights back against the attacks on LEED green building certification, Treehugger

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Enviros bash industry-backed “green” building program

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Another big EPA court victory — this time on soot pollution

by Colleen50E Posted on May 12, 2014

Legal trifecta!

Another big EPA court victory — this time on soot pollution

By

Shutterstock

The National Association of Manufacturers was told on Friday by a federal court that, no, it does not have the right to manufacture as many asthma attacks, heart attacks, and strokes as it would like.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the EPA acted properly in 2012 when it further restricted allowable soot emissions. It was the Obama administration’s third big environmental legal victory in a month. And experts say that bodes well for the administration’s efforts to clamp down on climate-changing emissions from power plants. The L.A. Times explains:

The 11-page decision rejected industry complaints and found that the EPA had acted reasonably and within its bounds when it adopted stricter nationwide standards for fine particulate matter. The tiny, chemical-laden particles and liquid droplets are emitted by power plants, diesel trucks, refineries and factories. They lodge deep in the lungs when inhaled and are linked to heart and lung disease, respiratory illnesses and premature deaths. …

Based on scientific studies, the EPA tightened annual limits on fine particle pollution from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12 micrograms per cubic meter and set new requirements for dozens of major cities to install air quality monitors to test for the pollutants near busy roadways.

This follows the previous week’s big Supreme Court ruling that the EPA acted properly when it restricted the amount of smog-causing pollution that can drift from coal-fired power plants in Midwestern states to East Coast states. And nearly a month ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected industry’s legal challenges to EPA restrictions on the amount of mercury and other toxic pollution pumped out by coal power plants.

“The three rulings together create quite the trifecta by significantly furthering the administration’s agenda on addressing climate change through the existing Clean Air Act,” Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School, told the L.A. Times.

Reducing emissions of the tiny sooty particles, called PM2.5, will cost industry $53 million to $350 million a year, the EPA says. But health care costs will come down substantially thanks to reduced instances of stroke, cancer, heart attacks, and asthma attacks. The agency estimates that the health benefits will be $4 billion to $9.1 billion — a return on investment of $12 to $171 for every $1 spent on pollution controls.

But the financial benefits from averted health-care costs don’t directly flow to America’s big manufacturers, so the association that represents them couldn’t care less. Linda Kelly, general counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers, says the group will consider yet another appeal. She complains that the ruling “underscores the difficulty manufacturers face in pushing back against a powerful and often overreaching EPA.”


Source
Obama administration limits on soot pollution upheld by appeals court, L.A. Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Another big EPA court victory — this time on soot pollution

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Bird lovers to sue feds for letting wind farms kill eagles

by NoemiSmalley Posted on May 2, 2014

Bird lovers to sue feds for letting wind farms kill eagles

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Shutterstock

Some bird advocates ain’t cool with recent moves by the Obama administration to smooth the way for wind power.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in December that it will issue 30-year “take” permits that allow wind farms to inadvertently kill bald and golden eagles, provided they use “advanced conservation practices” to limit the number of deaths. Previously the permits were issued for only up to five years.

This week, the American Bird Conservancy said it will sue the federal government over the permits.

Wind energy advocates point out that turbines are less deadly to birds than many fossil fuel operations, not to mention household cats and buildings — and that wind power can help birds by slowing climate change. Still, the bird lovers at ABC think the wind industry needs to do more to protect our feathery friends.

The rule change “was adopted in violation of several federal wildlife protection and environmental laws,” ABC’s attorneys wrote in a letter stating their intent to sue. The group alleges the policy shift violates the Endangered Species Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and argues that it was made without the public consultation or environmental analysis that should have been required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“ABC strongly supports wind power and other renewable energy projects when those projects are located in an appropriate, wildlife-friendly manner,” the letter states. “On the other hand, when decisions regarding such projects are made precipitously and without compliance with elementary legal safeguards, … ABC will take appropriate action to protect eagles and other migratory birds.”


Source
American Bird Conservancy to Take Legal Action Over FWS 30-Year Eagle Kill Rule, American Bird Conservancy

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Is Monsanto’s Roundup linked to a deadly kidney disease?

by JaimieGuerra Posted on May 1, 2014

Is Monsanto’s Roundup linked to a deadly kidney disease?

By

Emma Rothaar

Entire communities of sugar-farm laborers in Central America are being crippled by a sometimes deadly kidney malady — and nobody knows why. But some think the herbicide glyphosate, sold by Monsanto under the name Roundup, may be connected to the epidemic.

NPR reports on the rash of illnesses:

The first reports of this disease date back at least 20 years. At first the clusters of men dying of kidney failure was dismissed as a fluke. Then it was written off as diabetes or some other underlying health problem that hadn’t been correctly diagnosed.

Despite years of research all over the world, scientists still can’t definitively pinpoint the cause.

“We don’t know. That’s the unfortunate part, and we do desperately need to find some answers,” says Reina Turcios-Ruiz, a medical epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s office in Guatemala City.

This form of kidney failure, known as insuficiencia renal cronica in Spanish (or chronic kidney disease of unknown origin in English), is now found from southern Mexico to Panama, Turcios-Ruiz says. But it occurs only along the Pacific coast.

The disease is killing relatively young men, sometimes while they’re still in their early 20s. Researchers at Boston University have attributed about 20,000 deaths to this form of kidney failure over the past two decades in Central America.

Chronic kidney disease has also shown up in rice-farming communities of Sri Lanka, leading the country’s government to restrict the use of Roundup and similar herbicides earlier this year.

Shortly before the Sri Lankan restrictions were imposed, a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health hypothesized a link between glyphosate and the kidney disease in areas with hard ground water that contains certain metals. “Although glyphosate alone does not cause an epidemic of chronic kidney disease, it seems to have acquired the ability to destroy the renal tissues of thousands of farmers when it forms complexes with a localized geo environmental factor (hardness) and nephrotoxic metals,” the researchers concluded.

The NPR reporter interviewed a victim of the mystery disease who is convinced that agricultural chemicals are to blame. “It was the chemicals, the chemicals at the plantation,” sickened Nicaragua sugar worker Manuel Antonio Tejarino said. “I feel like I’m burning. My blood pressure goes down. I get dizzy. Someone has to help me walk. If I’m alone I’ll fall down.”


Source
Mysterious Kidney Disease Slays Farmworkers In Central America, NPR
Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits Behind the Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka?, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Sri Lankan President Bans Sale of Roundup Over Chronic Kidney Disease Study, Sustainable Pulse

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Is Monsanto’s Roundup linked to a deadly kidney disease?

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Why is Alaska fighting the cleanup of Chesapeake Bay?

by KlaraGuzm Posted on April 30, 2014

Why is Alaska fighting the cleanup of Chesapeake Bay?

By

Shutterstock

The EPA has a plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay, which has been polluted by agriculture interests for decades. A “pollution diet” finalized by the agency in 2010 would reduce the amount of animal waste and fertilizer that gushes into the bay from the 64,000-square-mile watershed every year, causing dead zones.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, corn growers, pork and poultry producers, and home builders are fighting that plan in a federal lawsuit, accusing the EPA of making an illegal power grab. Twenty-one states — including Alaska and many others that are nowhere near the Chesapeake watershed — have joined the suit, worried that the cleanup plan could set a dangerous precedent and spread ecological health to their own tainted waterways.

Monday was the deadline for submitting briefs in the case, and fortunately some of those briefs have been in support of the EPA’s plan. Maryland and Virginia, the two states that actually border the bay, are all for cleaning it up. “This lawsuit attacks our efforts to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay and strengthen its crucial economic value,” said Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler. “Maryland must preserve its partnership with an effective EPA to safeguard our environment and sustain the thousands of jobs supported by the bay.”

Nearby Delaware and Washington, D.C., are in support of the EPA’s plan too, as are six major cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Four Florida conservation groups have also filed a brief in support of the EPA’s plan, making this cogent point: “The heart of the Clean Water Act is the principle that the Nation’s waters cannot be used — directly or indirectly — to dispose of waste. This appeal [by the Farm Bureau] represents a challenge to that principle.”

The case is a big deal, as the Associated Press points out:

Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, says the appeals court ruling could go a long way in shaping environmental policy. “A win will keep intact the EPA’s policy approach, while a loss would not only have an effect on the Chesapeake but similar policies in other parts of the U.S.,” Coglianese said.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is expected to begin hearing oral arguments in the case this summer.


Source
Challenge to Chesapeake Cleanup Tests EPA Power, The Associated Press
Six Major Cities Add Their Support To Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Plan, ThinkProgress

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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A week after Alaska OKs a big gas pipeline, another gas pipeline ruptures

by FletcherFoulds Posted on April 30, 2014

A week after Alaska OKs a big gas pipeline, another gas pipeline ruptures

By

Patrik Sartz, Alaska DEC via Alaska Dispatch

Oily brown where there should only be white.

BP sprayed a fine mist of oil, natural gas, and water over 27 acres of tundra on Alaska’s North Slope on Monday. It’s still not known how much vaporized oil and gas were spilled during the two-hour natural-gas pipeline accident at Prudhoe Bay, where a large oilfield is located, nor how long it will take to repair the ruptured pipe. But here’s what we do know, thanks to the Alaska Dispatch:

Such a large area of snow was covered because the leak occurred in the pipe’s 12 o’clock position, on top, and the pressurized gas sprayed crude oil and water into a strong wind, said Ashley Adamczak, a spokesperson with [the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation]. …

The damage is a little more than a mile from the 2006 leak of a transit line that ultimately became the largest recorded spill on the North Slope. That spill lasted five days and discharged 200,000 gallons over two acres. BP ultimately pled guilty to negligent discharge after failing to address corrosion. …

As for the cleanup, the hope is to get the oil and water removed before the snow and ice melts, and before migratory birds arrive in perhaps a couple of weeks, Adamczak said.

And this is something else that we know: The accident came a week after Alaska’s legislature gave tentative approval to a plan by BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Keystone XL-backer TransCanada to build an 800-mile pipeline to transport natural gas drilled from the North Slope to an export terminal. The idea is to start exporting the natural gas to Europe and Asia via the $45 billion to $65 billion Alaska Pipeline Project by the mid-2020s.

What could possibly go wrong?

Patrik Sartz, Alaska DEC via Alaska Dispatch

The pipeline rupture that triggered Monday’s oil spill.


Source
Broken pipe sprays oily plume across snowy tundra at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska Dispatch
Alaska lawmakers back governor on plan to export North Slope gas, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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