Tag Archives: energy

May 2015 Was the Hottest in History. Here’s How to Stay Cool Without Adjusting Your AC.

by HalleyFender Posted on June 20, 2015

Continued here – 

May 2015 Was the Hottest in History. Here’s How to Stay Cool Without Adjusting Your AC.

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Maps: The Poorest Areas in America Are Often the Most Polluted

by NateOrmiston Posted on June 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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The environmental justice movement has been fighting the hazards and toxins disproportionately affecting poor communities of color for decades. Now it has a new tool.

The US Environmental Protection Agency recently made public an interactive map that allows people to see how their communities’ exposure to hazardous waste, air pollution, and other environmental risks stack up with the rest of the country. “EJSCREEN” combines demographic data and environmental factors to create an “environmental justice index.” Environmental data includes vulnerability to air toxins and high particulate levels, exposure to lead-based paint, and proximity to chemical and hazardous waste treatment centers.

We started to explore the map, focusing on a few major cities. Not surprisingly, notoriously impoverished neighborhoods like West Oakland, the Bronx, and East New Orleans have the worst environmental justice indexes in many cases:

Hazardous waste:

New York City:

EPA EJSCREEN

San Francisco Bay Area:

Air pollution:

New York City:

EPA EJSCREEN

San Francisco Bay Area:

EPA EJSCREEN

Water discharge facilities:

New York City:

EPA EJSCREEN

New Orleans:

EPA EJSCREEN

Lead-based paint exposure:

New York City:

EPA EJSCREEN

San Francisco Bay Area:

EPA EJSCREEN

EPA EJSCREEN

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Maps: The Poorest Areas in America Are Often the Most Polluted

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This Is What It’s Like to Hang On to the Anchor of a Shell Oil Ship for 63 Hours

by Megan50M83585733 Posted on June 6, 2015

Mother Jones

As Royal Dutch Shell prepares for its summer Arctic drilling plans, environmentalists, indigenous communities, and concerned citizens alike are ramping up their efforts to stop it. Last month, “kayaktivists”—that is, activists in kayaks—surrounded one of Shell’s oil drilling rigs while it temporarily docked in the Port of Seattle, and earlier this past week, a group of environmentalists and native Alaskans challenged the sufficiency of the operation’s environmental analysis in the federal court of appeals.

But over Memorial Day weekend, two environmental activists took things to a new extreme, literally putting their bodies between Shell’s operation and its destination in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. On the evening of Friday, May 22nd, Chiara Rose D’Angelo, 20, climbed onto the anchor of the Arctic Challenger, a support ship for Shell’s exploratory drilling operation, docked 90 miles north of Seattle in Bellingham Bay, in an attempt to prevent it from leaving for the Arctic. The next morning, Matthew Fuller, 37, joined her.

“The Arctic is an extremely sacred place,” D’Angelo told me. “I did it because it’s extremely important that we protect the remaining natural food sources that we have. As long as there is something to do about it, I’ll do it.”

It turned out that the ship did not leave right away, and Fuller ended up dangling from the anchor chain for 22 hours, while D’Angelo stayed on for 63 hours—nearly three days. The two may be facing financial repercussions, as well. While the US Coast Guard did not force them to get off of the ship, on Thursday they mailed D’Angelo, Fuller, and two others penalty notices for violating a 100-yard safety zone around the ship that could amount to as much as $40,000 in fines per person.

While dealing with the fallout of their protest, Fuller, a graduate student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa., and D’Angelo, an undergraduate student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wa., spoke to me separately about their time on the Arctic Challenger. I combined their responses and edited them for clarity and length below:

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This Is What It’s Like to Hang On to the Anchor of a Shell Oil Ship for 63 Hours

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Move over, cotton. This smart fabric could change our lives

by WernerCordner Posted on June 1, 2015

DON’T GET HEATED

Move over, cotton. This smart fabric could change our lives

By on 1 Jun 2015commentsShare

World peace has always been an unachievable fantasy. Until now.

A group of researchers at UC San Diego just got $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to make clothing that could regulate body temperature and thus reduce the amount of energy we use for heating and cooling. Here’s more from a press release out of UCSD:

The smart fabric will be designed to regulate the temperature of the wearer’s skin — keeping it at 93° F — by adapting to temperature changes in the room. When the room gets cooler, the fabric will become thicker. When the room gets hotter, the fabric will become thinner. To accomplish this feat, the researchers will insert polymers that expand in the cold and shrink in the heat inside the smart fabric.

According to one of the researchers on the project, 93 degrees is a comfortable skin temperature for most people (who knew?). Clothes made from the fabric will also include “supplemental heating and cooling devices” in certain spots that tend to get particularly uncomfortable (parts of the back, bottoms of feet, etc.).

So what does this have to do with world peace? Think about it: all that passive aggression that builds when your roommate cranks up the thermostat, and then you (resident environmentalist) turn it back down to save energy? Or that crankiness that creeps over you when a public place has the A.C. on arctic chill, but you didn’t bring a jacket because it’s 80 freaking degrees outside? Or that thing about violent crimes going up in the summer? It could all go away! Or, at least, cool down.

Joseph Wang, lead researcher on the project and a professor of nanoengineering at UCSD, is envisioning a smart fabric revolution:

“We are aiming to make the smart clothing look and feel as much like the clothes that people regularly wear. It will be washable, stretchable, bendable and lightweight. We also hope to make it look attractive and fashionable to wear,” said Wang.

A word of advice, Wang: If you want to start a smart fabric revolution, you better do more than just hope on that last point. We — the vainest of all species — put ourselves through all manner of discomfort in the name of fashion. You better believe that we’ll continue to suffer if that smart clothing doesn’t look good, too.

Source:
Engineers win grant to make smart clothes for personalized cooling and heating

, UC San Diego.

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Move over, cotton. This smart fabric could change our lives

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The RealAge (R) Makeover – Michael F. Roizen

by Myrna Posted on May 29, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The RealAge (R) Makeover

Michael F. Roizen

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $0.99

Publish Date: March 17, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HarperCollins


Why not live at 60 feeling like you did at 35? Thousands of Americans are younger today than they were five years ago. How is that possible? By following the specific recommendations that reverse aging in Dr. Michael Roizen&apos;s bestselling book RealAge®: Are You As Young As You Can Be?, people who were previously much older than their chronological age have now taken up to twentynine years off their biological ages. Since that first publication, more than 10 million people have taken the RealAge® test in one form or another, and thousands of people have thanked Dr. Roizen for helping them make simple changes in their lives — changes that have made them healthier, younger, and more vibrant. In the last several years, Dr. Roizen and his team have learned much more about the aging process. The RealAge® Makeover makes sense of recent critical medical findings — mportant new research on inflammation in your arteries, stress reduction, chronic disease management, hormone replacement therapy, and other choices you can make to keep aging at a distance. You’ll also find the latest on vitamins and other supplements, which are age-reducing, which are aging, and which ones to avoid if you are taking certain medications. Roizen then offers more than seventy ways to reduce or even prevent 80 percent of the diseases that make you feel older. For example, coffee or the right kind of chocolate in moderate amounts can help reduce inflammation, preserving your arteries, joints, and memory. But the wrong choice can lead to needless aging and loss of energy, such as taking too much Vitamin A. And The RealAge® Makeover tells you how much (in years) each choice is worth so you can make the choices that are meaningful to you. More potent than any statistic or finding are the personal stories interwoven throughout — success stories from readers who followed the RealAge program, became biologically younger, and are living happier, healthier lives. With this book, readers have more opportunity than ever to turn back their biological clock to look, feel, and actually be many years younger. Join the RealAge® Revolution and give yourself a RealAge® Makeover!

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The RealAge (R) Makeover – Michael F. Roizen

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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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Here’s One Way the Developing World Totally Has America Beat

by BryantTroy Posted on May 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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China is by far the world’s biggest investor in clean energy technologies like solar and wind. Last year, its clean energy spending hit a record $83 billion, a 39 percent jump from the year before, and more than twice what is spent in the United States.

Although America and most other G20 nations are moving toward a clean energy overhaul, its the developing world where you’ll find the most explosive growth: When you add in emerging markets like Brazil, India, and South Africa, clean energy investment in developing countries totaled $131 billion in 2014, only six percent less than the combined total for developed countries. It’s the closest that gap has ever been, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF):

BNEF

That gap will soon close, and then start growing in the other direction, according to a new report from the Pew Trust. Based on financial data from BNEF, the report’s authors project that more than $7 trillion will be invested in new energy systems by 2030, two-thirds of it in developing countries. (Pew’s analysis doesn’t put China in that category.) Roughly $5 trillion of it will be clean energy investment.

It’s no mystery why developing countries are positioning themselves to win this race. For one, they need the electricity. As it stands, more than 1.3 billion people, mostly in Asia, India, and sub-Saharan Africa, live without access to reliable modern service:

Pew

If you want to bring electricity to places without a power grid, renewables have lots of advantages. For one, it’s far cheaper and faster to build a solar or wind farm than a coal or gas-fired generation plant. And renewables can be built locally, on a small scale, eliminating the need for long-distance transmission lines. Consider what happened with cellphones: Mobile technology became cheap and ubiquitous before many African nations had landline networks, so people just “leapfrogged” straight to wireless.

The same phenomenon is afoot in the energy market, says Todd Moss, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, who was not involved with the Pew report. “I don’t have any doubt that over the next two generations we’ll see colossal investments in the energy sector in many African countries” and in India.

Compare the maps above and below. You’ll note a strong connection between so-called energy poverty (above) and future power demand (below), in Africa especially. This is hardly surprising, but only in the past few years has renewable energy has become affordable and accessible enough to get the transformation rolling.

Pew

Energy poverty isn’t the only factor driving clean energy’s growth. In Bulgaria or Ukraine, both of which Pew identified as key places for energy investment in the developing world, the growth is driven by a desire to wrest control from foreign fossil fuel suppliers, i.e. Russia’s Gazprom. That’s according to Phyllis Cuttino, a clean energy analyst who authored the Pew report. “These countries want to have sources they don’t have to import, and they want to stimulate economic growth,” she said.

The report also identified Kenya, Peru, Taiwan, Morocco, Vietnam, Pakistan, and the Philippines as top attractors of clean energy investment. For now, anyway: The lineup may change from year to year in response to domestic policies (mandates, subsidies, etc.). And Moss said that the report underestimates the role African countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia will play. Still, many developing countries are in for internal political battles over clean energy, of the sort that we’ve seen, and are still fighting, in the United States.

African utility companies also often struggle with bad credit histories, Moss said, which can make it difficult to secure loans from the World Bank or other international institutions. “The key to unlocking investment in the power sector is getting a long-term, credit-worthy deal,” he said.

Regardless of which countries come out ahead, we’re almost certain to see far more money invested in clean energy than in fossil fuels over the next few decades. In the charts below, solar in particular is projected to grow massively by 2030, while new fossil fuel installations will shrink to less than half of the total.

Pew

So where does this leave United States? There’s a huge opportunity for clean energy entrepreneurs to expand into developing countries, Cuttino said. Indeed, according to Commerce Department stats, six of our top 10 destinations for clean energy exports are developing countries. President Barack Obama has made electrification in Africa a signature foreign policy initiative of his second term. That move in itself sends an important signal about the difference between clean energy here and in the developing world. Here the benefits are primarily environmental. There, clean energy is seen as a key step to alleviating poverty.

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Here’s One Way the Developing World Totally Has America Beat

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It’s Experiment Week

by Michael Rinchen Posted on May 18, 2015

Mother Jones

As you all know, I’m recovering nicely from my chemotherapy. That is to say, technically I’m recovering nicely. All my numbers are in a good range and are continuing to improve, and there’s every reason to think that will continue.

However, I still feel crappy. Heavy fatigue and nausea rule my day. But I’m thinking that I might—might!—be feeling ever so slightly better on that front. Just a smidgen. Plus I’m so bored I could scream. So I’m going to test my energy level this week by writing two blog posts a day. It’s unlikely that any of them will include heavy analysis. They’ll be more in the mold of this morning’s post, “Marco Rubio is a Moron,” which was not exactly a strain on my gray matter or powers of concentration. But it was kinda fun.

Anyway that’s the plan. And just to add to the difficulty factor, it turns out my neighbors are beginning a 3-month home gutting and remodel. That should be nice and noisy, especially since we share a common wall with them. So here’s my tentative daily schedule:

Eat breakfast
Rest
Write blog post.
Rest.
Take a walk around the block.
Rest.
Write blog post.
Rest.
Take a shower.
Rest.
Eat lunch.
Rest.
Take another walk around the block.
Rest.

And….that will probably do it. We’ll see.

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It’s Experiment Week

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The Pipeline That Texans Are Freaking Out Over (Nope, Not Keystone)

by KianBittner Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier this year a couple of billionaires landed a nearly $770 million contract to run a 143-mile-long natural gas pipeline through Texas’s pristine Big Bend region. As of May 11, rail shipments of pipe had begun to arrive in Big Bend’s Fort Stockton area. This recent progress on the pipeline project is fueling pushback from locals who’ve been concerned about this project since it was announced in November 2014. Big Bend is one of Texas’ last unspoiled wilderness areas and one of few remaining holdouts in a state riddled with energy transmission pipelines and large-scale oil and gas activity. Fearing potential land grabs, increased traffic, and environmental desecration, locals have been mobilizing through town hall meetings and launching activist campaigns to oppose it.

What is the Trans-Pecos pipeline? At 42 inches wide and under 1,400 pounds of pressure per square inch, the Trans-Pecos pipeline will carry as much as 1.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day after its projected completion in early 2017. The gas will originate in Texas’s Permian Basin, travel the length of the pipeline to the border at Presidio, Texas, and Ojinaga, Mexico, where it will be piped further into Mexico for industrial use and power generation. The project was commissioned by the Mexican Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) as part of the country’s push to modernize its energy systems.

A consortium that includes two energy companies, Mexico-based Carso and Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, won the contract to construct the pipeline in January. Carso is owned by Carlos Slim, the world’s second-richest man, who made his original fortune by charging Mexico’s phone customers monopoly prices, while levying some of the highest fees disproportionately on the poor.

ETP is led by Republican megadonor and multibillionaire Kelcy Warren of Dallas. In February, the company brought on former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to the company’s Board of Directors to offer “strategic guidance to ETP’s executive management team,” according to a spokeswoman for the company. Even before that, Perry and Warren had ties: Perry has received at least $250,000 in campaign donations from Warren since 2011. ETP is also currently embroiled in a separate controversial pipeline project to transport crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Illinois. The company is also facing claims that a representative from a subsidiary offered the services of a teenage prostitute to a landowner in exchange for letting ETP run the crude oil pipeline through his property. “We take these types of matters very seriously and are investigating further,” an ETP spokeswoman told KCRG of the claims.

What’s controversial about this project? ETP is running construction of the pipeline on the US side of the border, and Big Bend locals are frustrated with what they’re calling a lack of transparency from the company. Among their key complaints is confusion from ETP on which agency will provide regulatory oversight for the pipeline. This question hinges on whether the pipeline is designated as “interstate” or “intrastate.” The former means that the pipeline is crossing an international border, which would require a Presidential Permit, triggering more rigorous federal guidelines for the pipeline’s construction and operation. The latter, “intrastate,” would require a T-4 form from the Railroad Commission of Texas, the standard application for a permit to own and operate a pipeline through Texas.

Proposed route for the Trans-Pecos pipeline. ETP

Given current plans to have the gas transported into Mexico, some local activists argue that the pipeline should be designated interstate. But in mid-April, ETP hosted several “open house” meetings for Big Bend locals where they claimed the pipeline would be assigned the intrastate designation, and that the company had already applied for and received a T-4 permit from the Railroad Commission.

But a spokesperson for the Railroad Commission told Big Bend Now that’s not the case:

“The Railroad Commission’s pipeline safety jurisdiction applies only to intrastate pipelines that begin and end in Texas. The Energy Transfer flyer you provided me on this pipeline states the pipeline will terminate with an interconnect with a pipeline near Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, which means this is an interstate and international pipeline under the pipeline safety authority of the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and the U.S. Department of State. In short, their flyer is incorrect, and we are contacting the company to make a correction.”

The Railroad Commission did not respond to phone calls or emails from Mother Jones. In a recent email, Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners, says that only the small section of pipeline that crosses the international border requires a presidential permit, while the remaining 140-plus miles of pipeline across West Texas would fall exclusively under the Texas Railroad Commission’s authority.

How might this project affect the natural habitats? The Big Bend area is a geologically rich, wide-open expanse of mountains, desert, and ranch land; the nearby UNESCO biosphere reserve Big Bend National Park is home to 1,200 species of plants and scores of mammals, birds, reptiles, and other animal species. While the exact route isn’t yet known, the proposed direction shows the pipeline running through private ranch land, close to Big Bend Ranch State Park, and even closer to the Chinati State Natural Area, an undeveloped swath of land known for its diverse flora and fauna. In Texas, pipeline companies are legally allowed to use eminent domain to seize private land if an agreement isn’t reached with individual landowners. ETP’s Granado says that land condemnation is “always an option of last resort.”

But Big Bend is the kind of place where locals take private property seriously and have a distaste for outside interlopers. As local former justice of the peace and rancher Mary Luedeke told San Antonio Express-News, if “you go to talking about condemning something by eminent domain, you’ll get shot in this part of the country.” Anticipating a potential land grab, some locals have already sought legal counsel from San Angelo lawyer Joe Will Ross, who often handles eminent domain cases. (Citing his clients’ interests, Ross declined to comment for this story.)

More than anything, many locals object to what they see as a potential start to wider oil and gas activity in a region that has, up until now, managed to avoid it. “We don’t want the pipeline to impact the sanctity of this region,” says David Keller of Big Bend Conservation Alliance, which is organizing informational meetings on the pipeline for residents in affected counties. “If you go to Midlands just a couple hours north of here, it’s just an industrial wasteland, a sacrifice zone for the oil and gas industry. We see what that does to other communities,” he says, adding: “Big Bend is the last frontier of Texas. Wide-open spaces, beautiful open landscapes, antelope, all that, and we don’t want it to start getting industrialized.”

What’s next for the Trans-Pecos pipeline? Despite mounting opposition, ETP is laying the groundwork for construction, which they’ve announced will begin late this year or early 2016, with hopes of having natural gas flowing by 2017. The company has sent out land surveyors, one of whom was caught trespassing on a ranch; according to Granado, the rail shipments of pipe that began arriving in Big Bend this week will continue to do so through early July.

Correction: This article originally stated that the pipeline would run through public land areas.

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The Pipeline That Texans Are Freaking Out Over (Nope, Not Keystone)

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Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

by PercySpangler Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“It’s not easy being green” is a tired cliché, but it’s still particularly true if you are a giant technology company. Even Apple, Facebook, and Google—the best of the bunch, according to a new report from Greenpeace—will have to put in serious additional effort to fully shift to clean energy, especially in terms of lobbying at the state and local level. And the industry laggards, which include Amazon and eBay, have that much further to go.

Here’s how Greenpeace categorizes the tech giants:

Greenpeace

Energy efficiency in traditional appliances keeps improving, but our demand for energy is boosted by new technologies. In particular, companies that manufacture mobile devices and provide services like email, social networking, cloud storage, and streaming video have to contend with constantly escalating demand for data storage.

At the same time, being eco-friendly is important to many of those same companies—or at least important to their public image. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft all dropped out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) last year because of bad publicity around the right-wing corporatist group’s opposition to action on climate change. But tech giants will need to do a lot more than quit dirty lobbying groups, Greenpeace argues; they’ll need to actually get involved in the political sphere on behalf of clean energy solutions.

First, the good news is that some tech companies are making respectable efforts to power their operations through clean energy sources. Google has invested heavily in solar energy, and Apple announced just yesterday that it’s expanding its renewable programs to manufacturing facilities in China. But in many cases, the issue is not whether companies have good intentions but whether clean energy is available to them.

Here are a few key quotes from the Greenpeace report:

Apple continues to lead the charge in powering its corner of the internet with renewable energy even as it continues to rapidly expand. All three of its data center expansions announced in the past year will be powered with renewable energy.
Google continues to match Apple in deploying renewable energy with its expansion in some markets, but its march toward 100 percent renewable energy is increasingly under threat by monopoly utilities for several data centers including those in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Singapore and Taiwan.

And here are some challenges the report lays out:

Amazon’s adoption of a 100 percent renewable energy goal, while potentially significant, lacks basic transparency and, unlike similar commitments from Apple, Facebook or Google, does not yet appear to be guiding Amazon’s investment decisions toward renewable energy and away from coal.
The rapid rise of streaming video is driving significant growth in our online footprint, and in power-hungry data centers and network infrastructure needed to deliver it.
Microsoft has slipped further behind Apple and Google in the race to build a green internet, as its cloud footprint continues to undergo massive growth in an attempt to catch up with Amazon, but has not kept pace with Apple and Google in terms of its supply of renewable electricity.

The underlying problem in many cases is that dirty energy-dependent utility monopolies are providing the electricity for massive, and growing, data centers. If these utilities use coal or natural gas, then by extension so do the tech companies with data centers in their service areas. Meeting data-storage demand without burning more fossil fuels will not be easy. Greenpeace writes:

Big data’s massive growth is expected to continue with the emergence of cheap smartphones: nearly 80 percent of the planet’s adult population will be connected to the internet by 2020, and the total number of devices connected to the internet will be roughly twice the global population by 2018. Internet traffic from mobile devices increased 69 percent in 2014 alone with the rapid increase of video streaming to mobile devices, and mobile traffic will exceed what is delivered over wired connections by 2018.

There are different ways to increase renewable energy supply at data centers. The first, of course, is simply to generate clean power on site with solar panels or wind turbines. Apple is already doing this and other companies are following its lead. But data centers require so much energy that they won’t generally be able to cover most of their needs that way. Other free-market approaches include power purchase agreements, in which the tech companies can make a deal with a clean energy supplier, and “green tariffs,” in which they agree to buy 100 percent clean power from the local utility at a price premium.

To get all their energy from renewables, though, will require tech companies to engage in policy debates. Greenpeace writes:

In many markets, companies’ ability to power with renewable energy will remain severely limited without policy changes. Even in more liberalized markets, it behooves companies to advocate for policies that will green the broader grid, narrowing the ground that they need to cover to power with 100 percent renewable energy. Companies can and must become advocates with the regulators and policymakers who ultimately have the power to change markets in ways that will allow companies to achieve their renewable energy goals. State policymakers covet data center investments, offering significant tax incentives to companies to lure them into their borders. Companies could compel a similar race to the top on renewable energy.

There were a few instances last year of tech companies lobbying for clean energy policies—Google submitted comments in favor of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and several major tech firms signed the “Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles” calling on state regulators and utilities to expand access to renewable energy.

Greenpeace argues that tech companies particularly need to get engaged in state and local politics, forming an effective counterweight to the fossil fuel and right-wing interest group money that has swayed state legislative races and outcomes in recent years. Last year, Facebook and Microsoft submitted comments to the Iowa Utilities Board in favor of distributed electricity generation, but that was a relatively isolated event. That sort of activism needs to become routine.

In North Carolina, for example, Greenpeace notes that it’s illegal to buy renewable energy from a third party instead of buying whatever dirty energy is offered by state monopoly Duke Energy. The same state legislature that is offering tax incentives to attract data centers is considering changing that law. Tech companies should tell North Carolina that doing so is a precondition to getting any data centers located there, Greenpeace argues. Similarly, Virginia has a harsh cap on third-party clean power purchases, and the State Corporation Commission is due to review that rule this year.

You can be sure that the utilities, the Koch brothers, Art Pope, and Americans for Prosperity will be involved in these fights. If clean energy supporters are not, they will be over before they have begun. To really be green, tech companies need to put their muscle into this fight.

More here:

Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

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