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The Green Week in Review is a podcast, hosted by SustainableBusiness.com News Editor Bart King. It’s posted every Friday morning and is about 15 minutes long. You can listen to it through your browser or download it to a portable MP3 player. Sign up for our General News RSS Feed and it will be automatically downloaded to your computer’s media player each week. In this week’s show… The US Department of the Interior announced to critical decisions this week, one concerning oil and gas drilling off Alaska’s northern coast and another concerning land lease policy for oil shale development in western states. Two important reports came out this week. The first, by the National Research Council, identified $120 billion in hidden costs associated with US energy production. And the second by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, proposed a framework for developing a self-sustaining home energy efficiency retrofit industry. Also, Senate Democrats may have found another Republican willing to support climate change legislation. Plus, a summary of the week’s top cleantech headlines. ++++ Email comments or questions to bart@sustainablebusiness.com
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A report from GRAIN discusses how agriculture can put back much of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the soil. Soils contain enormous amounts of carbon, mostly in the form of organic matter. The report shows that industrial agriculture, and thus the global food system, has spewed large amounts of this carbon into the atmosphere. Policies focused on restoring soil fertility – restoring the organic matter in the soil which has been lost – would make a huge contribution to resolving the rapidly escalating climate crisis. In 50 years, soils could capture about 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide – more than two thirds of the current excess in the atmosphere. The role of the global industrial food system in creating the climate crisis has been seriously underestimated, says the report. Calculations reveal the global food system is the most important single factor behind global warming, responsible for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This includes oil-dependent industrial farming, together with the expansion of the meat industry, the destruction of world’s savannahs and forests to grow agricultural commodities, the use of fossil-fuel energy to transport and process food, and the extensive use of chemical fertilizers. To […]
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Vice President Biden Unveils Energy Efficiency Home Retrofit Plan Team Germany Wins 2009 Solar Decathlon DOE: $24M in 3 Wind Research Facilities AWEA: Recovery Act Spurs U.S. Wind Growth in Q3 California Expands Rules for Feed-In Tariffs, Net Metering 2010 Fuel Economy Guide Released Report Examines Hidden Health, Environmental Costs of Energy Use Vice President Biden Unveils Energy Efficiency Home Retrofit Plan Vice President Biden released on October 19 the "Recovery Through Retrofit" report, which lays out a plan to help U.S. residents upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes. The program aims to increase green jobs and save energy through residential retrofits. At the same time, DOE issued a solicitation that offers $454 million in ARRA funds-including $390 million for a "Retrofit Ramp-Up" program-to support energy efficiency efforts across the country. At a Middle Class Task Force meeting earlier this year, Biden asked the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to develop a proposal for federal action to lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining industry for home energy efficiency retrofits. Their response is the October 19 report and includes these federal recommendations: provide U.S. homeowners with home energy retrofit information, including an energy performance label for existing homes; […]
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Addressing Climate Change Yields 4.5M Clean Energy Jobs Obama Announces $3.4B for Smart Grid DOE: $151M for ARPA-E Projects Plug-In Automaker to Reopen GM Plant DOE: $24M Loan to Emissions Controls Manufacturer Honda CR-Z Concept Hybrid Debuts in Tokyo EPA Names Top 20 Green-Powered Schools President Obama Announces $3.4B to Spur Smart Electric Grids President Obama announced the largest single electric grid modernization investment in U.S. history on October 27, with DOE tapping $3.4 billion in ARRA funds for 100 projects. The funds will be matched by $4.7 billion in private investments. According to the president, the smart grid projects will help build a "clean energy superhighway," with a goal of increasing energy efficiency and helping to spur the growth of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar power. The grants range from $400,000 to $200 million, and will reach every state except Alaska. The grants will pay for installing over 2.5 million smart meters, which allow utility customers to access dynamic pricing information and avoid periods of peak electricity use, when power is most expensive. The grants will also support installation of other smart grid components, including 1 million in-home energy displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other […]
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by Amol Deshpande I am an investor and entrepreneur with a passion for biomass in all its forms. As a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), I am involved with three different biomass-related technology investments focused on extracting the energy value from organic waste such as food waste, yard trimmings, wood and municipal solid waste (MSW). The venture capital industry began investing in biomass, in earnest, five years ago when hype around ethanol and other biobased fuels led to an unsustainable capacity expansion and strained feedstock supplies. This was followed by an era of numerous investments in "second generation" biofuels and chemicals, mostly focused on sugar and syngas platforms or algae. All of these involved some metabolic engineering or related breakthrough energy conversion. These investments are interesting and worthwhile, but fundamentally challenged. First, in most cases, proprietary feedstock supply chains must be built around these innovations, i.e., thousands of tons of specially cultivated biomass (e.g., energy crops) need to be redirected to wherever the plant is. Second, technology hurdles in yield and selectivity must be overcome where organisms or catalysts are tasked with producing novel output and scaled up from liters to millions of […]
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The Green Week in Review is a podcast, hosted by SustainableBusiness.com News Editor Bart King. It’s posted every Friday morning and is about 15 minutes long. You can listen to it through your browser or download it to a portable MP3 player. Sign up for our General News RSS Feed and it will be automatically downloaded to your computer’s media player each week. In this week’s show… Imara Corporation is one of a handful of U.S. companies developing the next generation battery technologies expected to one day power everything from power tools to passenger vehicles. Imara emerged from stealth operations in December 2008 and was one of three lithium-ion battery companies named to the Global Cleantech 100 list by the Cleantech Group. Last month the company announced that it’s first battery model is ready for commercial use, and this week Bart interviews CEO and founder Jeff Depew. Plus, a summary of the week’s top cleantech headlines. ++++ Email comments or questions to bart@sustainablebusiness.com
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Nation’s Should Build on Economy-Related Greenhouse Gas Cuts DOE: $87M for Solar Research and Deployment DOE Expands, Simplifies Loan Guarantees for Renewable Energy Projects USDA Loans $17.4M for Greensburg, Kansas, to Run on Wind Power Interior Department, California Launch Renewable Energy Initiative DOE to Strengthen Enforcement of Energy Efficiency Standards Nation’s Should Build on Economy-Related Greenhouse Gas Cuts Under the current economic slowdown, global CO2 emissions could fall 3% in 2009; the International Energy Agency (IEA) believes the world’s nations can build on this to avoid the future impacts of climate change. US emissions are expected to fall 5.9% in 2009. To support ongoing climate negotiations, the IEA released an early excerpt of its World Energy Outlook 2009, which finds the economic slowdown has already put the world on a path to achieve 5% lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in 2020 than they estimated just a year ago. To achieve greater reductions and shift the world toward low-carbon energy sources, the IEA estimates that $10.5 trillion will need to be pumped into the global energy sector over the next 20 years. But the IEA estimates that fuel savings across industry, transportation, and buildings will total $8.6 trillion over the same […]
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The Green Week in Review is a podcast, hosted by SustainableBusiness.com News Editor Bart King. It’s posted every Friday morning and is about 15 minutes long. You can listen to it through your browser or download it to a portable MP3 player. Sign up for our General News RSS Feed and it will be automatically downloaded to your computer’s media player each week. In this week’s show… It was a relatively slow news week. However, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring government agencies to set greenhouse gas reduction targets for the year 2020. The order is needed, in part, to bolster the nation’s credibility for international climate change negotiations underway in Thailand. Today marks the final day of those talks, and I’ll give you a brief update. Plus, a summary of the week’s top cleantech headlines. ++++ Email comments or questions to bart@sustainablebusiness.com
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Update: October 14 Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) announced the Senate climate change bill is written and ready to be debated before the Environment and Public Works committee. The bill now moves to the EPA for analysis, which should be finished by the end of October. On October 27, Boxer kicks off three days of hearings on the bill. Senator John McCain says he won’t support a climate bill that doesn’t have strong provisions for nuclear energy, since he doesn’t believe the US can achieve the necessary emissions reductions with it. Boxer included nuclear provisions in the bill, as well as the potential for offshore drilling to appease other Republicans. Update: October 6 Obama’s top climate and energy official Carol Browner says there’s virtually no chance Congress will have a climate bill ready for him to sign before Copenhagen negotiations begin in early December. She said the Senate may be able to complete its hearings on the bill, which along with the EPA’s recent moves to regulate greenhouses gases, would at least show the world the US is moving forward. — The crowd cheered at an event before the G20 meeting when Teresa Heinz read a message from husband, Senator John […]
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Obama Orders Federal Agencies to Trim Greenhouse Gases 20 Solar Homes Take Shape for Solar Decathlon DOE, Chinese Ministry Co-Host First EV Forum Obama Administration Invests $300M in Green Federal Fleet EPA Limits GHG Regulations to Large Facilities EIA Forecasts Lower Heating Bills this Winter President Obama Orders Federal Agencies to Trim Greenhouse Gases President Obama signed an executive order on October 5 that sets sustainability goals for federal agencies and focuses on improvements in their environmental, energy, and economic performance. The Executive Order requires federal agencies to set a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target for 2020 within 90 days. It also requires federal agencies to increase energy efficiency, reduce the petroleum consumption of their fleets, conserve water, reduce waste, support sustainable communities, and leverage their federal purchasing power to promote environmentally-responsible products and technologies. The new Executive Order makes reducing GHG emissions a priority for the federal government, which occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services. In his order, President Obama requires agencies to meet a number of energy, water, and waste reduction targets, including reducing vehicle fleet […]
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