Weekly Mulch from the Media Consortium: Green Daydreams vs. Reality – No Oil in the Gulf, Energy Efficiency, and the “Green Fog”

Continue Reading New York Universities Receive “Gold Star”: Government Nods to Universities’ Support of Sustainability

Tags: bp spill, clean gulf, Don Blankenship, ed markey, energy efficiency misperception, green marketing claims, greenwash, media consortium, oil dispersed, sara lee

April 27, 2010

New York Universities Receive “Gold Star”: Government Nods to Universities’ Support of Sustainability

By Clair Byrd

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Two universities in New York, Ithaca College and Hamilton College, have received the federal government’s version of a “gold star.” Ithaca College has been awarded two Energy Star certifications for residence halls Clarke and Hood and a platinum LEED award (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) established by the U.S. Green Building Council, for a business building on campus. Hamilton College has been awarded two Energy Star certifications for residence halls Skenandoa and Spencer, in addition to the LEED Gold certification for the renovation of the 40-year-old Kirner-Johnson (KJ) Building. While the Energy Star rating seems to be on every new washer and dryer heading to market, a building to receive the Energy Star rating is far more difficult. To qualify, the building must perform more efficiently than at least 75% of comparable buildings nationwide, based on the past year’s utility bills and energy consumption volume and costs. For a building to receive a LEED award, it must score appropriately in 5 categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.

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Tags: dorm energy use contest, energy consumption, energy star rating, gold certification, ithaca college, sustainability in universities

April 20, 2010

LED vs. Fluorescent Lighting – Are LED Tubes Ready for Prime Time? Take the Survey

Continue Reading LED vs. Fluorescent Lighting – Are LED Tubes Ready for Prime Time? Take the Survey

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LED lighting is becoming all the rage, from forward-thinking municipalities converting their traffic and street lighting to the efficiency of LED fixtures, right down to the desk lamp here on my desk.

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Tags: fluorescent lighting, led lighting, led tube, led vs. fluorescent, lighting technology

March 18, 2010

Businesses Urge Congress to Lead: Cap, Efficiency, Renewables the Path Sustainable Future

Continue Reading Businesses Urge Congress to Lead: Cap, Efficiency, Renewables the Path Sustainable Future

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Earlier this week leaders from 185 businesses and organizations, along with 77 individual activists, delivered to Congress a letter urging members that “greenhouse gas emissions can be cut swiftly and in an economically and environmentally sound way by means of a national emissions cap that is realized through a combination of aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.”

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Tags: climate policy, climate-change, energy efficiency and renewable energy, energy legislation, energy standards, fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, national emissions, nuclear energy, sustainable energy network

March 4, 2010

Is America Surrendering Its Leadership Role in the New Energy Economy?

Continue Reading Is America Surrendering Its Leadership Role in the New Energy Economy?

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A clean energy “call to arms”

A new report released today by the Center for American Progress entitled Out of the Running? How Germany, Spain, and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity and Why the United States Risks Getting Left Behind explains how clean energy is on track to become one of the biggest global industries in the coming decades. By 2020 the clean energy sector will be worth as much as $2.3 trillion. Many countries, like Germany, Spain, and China, have already begun to seize the enormous opportunity and potential in the coming transition to a new energy economy. While these countries have set in place public policies to provide a focused incentive for public and private investments in clean energy markets, the report argues that the United States lags behind, risking its leadership role in the emerging 21st century economy.

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Continue Reading EarthTalk: Rainforest Destruction and Enertia Houses

Tags: center for american progress, clean energy industry, energy economy, energy markets, new energy, New Energy Economy

October 12, 2009

EarthTalk: Rainforest Destruction and Enertia Houses

By GlobalWarmingisReal

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EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible, but most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest daily, and significantly degrading another 80,000 acres every day on top of that. Along with this loss and degradation, we are losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day—or some 50,000 species a year—as the forests fall.

According to researcher and writer Rhett Butler, who runs the critically acclaimed website, Mongabay.com, tropical rainforests are incredibly rich ecosystems that play a key role in the basic functioning of the planet. They help maintain the climate by regulating atmospheric gases and stabilizing rainfall, and provide many other important ecological functions.

Rainforests are also home to some 50 percent of the world’s species, Butler reports, “making them an extensive library of biological and genetic resources.” Environmentalists also point out that a quarter of our modern pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, but less than one percent of the trees and plants in the tropics have been tested for curative properties. Sadly, then, we don’t really know the true value of what we’re losing as we slash, burn, and plant over what was once a treasure trove of biodiversity.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), overall tropical deforestation rates this decade are 8.5 percent higher than during the 1990s. While this figure pertains to all forests in the world’s tropics, researchers believe the loss of primary tropical rainforest—the wildest and most diverse swaths—has increased by as much as 25 percent since the 1990s.

Despite increased public awareness of the importance of tropical rainforests, deforestation rates are actually on the rise, mostly due to activities such as commercial logging, agriculture, cattle ranching, dam-building and mining, but also due to subsistence agriculture and collection of fuel wood. Indeed, as long as commercial interests are allowed access to these economically depressed areas of the world, and as long as populations of poor rural people continue to expand, tropical rainforests will continue to fall.

Some scientists see light at the end of the tunnel. Joseph Wright of the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute says the tropics now have more protected land than in recent history, and believes that large areas of tropical forest will remain intact through 2030 and beyond: “We believe that the area covered by tropical forest will never fall to the exceedingly low levels that are often predicted and that extinction will threaten a smaller proportion of tropical forest species than previously predicted.”

Only time will tell whether Wright’s optimistic predictions ring true, or whether a more doomsday scenario will play out. To stay informed and be part of the solution, stay tuned to the websites of Rainforest Action Network, Rainforest Alliance, the Rainforest Site and, of course, Mongabay.com.

CONTACTS: Mongabay, www.mongabay.com; Rainforest Alliance, www.rainforestalliance.org; Rainforest Action Network, www.ran.org; Rainforest Site, www.rainforestsite.com; FAO, www.fao.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

EarthTalk®?From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I recently saw a reference to “Enertia houses” that require little in the way of external sources for heating or cooling. Do you have any information on this housing design?

– Alan Marshfield, via e-mail

Enertia is a brand name for homes designed and sold in kits by North Carolina-based Enertia Building Systems (EBS). The idea essentially marries the concepts of geothermal and passive solar heating/cooling into what amounts to a highly energy efficient hybrid system. Architectural inventor Michael Sykes coined the term “Enertia” in the 1980s to describe the innovative homes he was designing that would store solar and geothermal energy and make use of it for most if not all heating and cooling needs.

Under such a system, solid wood walls replace siding, framing, insulation and paneling, while an air flow channel—or “envelope”—runs around the building inside the walls, creating what Sykes terms a miniature biosphere. Inside the envelope, solar heated air circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the house and storing it within the wood mass of the walls, where it is doled out gradually.

By harnessing the properties of thermal inertia—the ability of materials to store heat and give it off slowly—an “Enertia” house maintains a relatively fixed and comfortable temperature throughout the warmer day (when solar heat is collected and stored) and cooler night (when the wood walls give off heat to keep things toasty as the mercury dips).

The heart of the system is a south-facing sun space within the envelope that is dominated by windows and which therefore soaks up lots of solar energy, filling the house’s wood walls with thermal energy that in turn radiates into the primary living space. The entire house functions like an electric heat pump—moving warm and cool air around to accommodate the comfort needs of the occupants. It works even throughout the seasonal changes of the year—with minimal to no fossil fuels consumed or pollution generated.

In one Enertia house in North Carolina, the only power bill the owners typically pay is $35/month for electricity. They also have a back-up in-floor radiant heating system powered by natural gas for long cloudy stretches or unusually cold weather. Gas bills for heat typically total $150 for the year, meaning the owners’ total annual outlay for heating, cooling and electricity is less than $600—some $1,000 less than traditional homes in the same zip code are paying, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

EBS markets several different designs for its Enertia houses, but all share the basic premise of primary interior living space heated and cooled by air channeled in from a south-facing “buffer zone” envelope and from below grade. Smaller houses in the line top out at about 2,000 square feet over two floors of living space, while larger ones encompass some 4,000 square feet of living space over three floors. Depending on the model, you could spend anywhere from $66,000 to $292,000 for a complete plan and building materials kit. The rest—including the selection and cost of the land and the labor to build the house—is up to you.

CONTACTS: Enertia Building Systems, www.enertia.com.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Dear EarthTalk: Do you have current facts and figures about how much rainforest is being destroyed each day around the world, and for what purpose(s)? – Teri, via e-mail

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Tags: commercial logging, deforestation rates, EarthTalk, enertia homes, environmental magazine, low energy homes, passive solar heating, rainforest destruction, tropical rainforest, tropical rainforests

August 24, 2009

EarthTalk: Tax Incentives for Homeowners to Increase Energy Efficiency

By GlobalWarmingisReal

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EarthTalk for Monday, August 24: Tax incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy systems for homeowners.

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Tags: clean renewable energy, efficiency upgrades, energy efficient insulation, environmental magazine, geothermal heat pumps, heating and cooling systems, home energy efficiency, hot water heaters, renewable energy equipment, solar hot water, solar hot water heaters, solar panels, tax incentives, wind energy systems

August 12, 2009

Buying Efficiency and the Real Cost of Climate Change – A Talk with Amory Lovins and Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta

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Two video excerpts from a talk at the Santa Fe Institute with physicist and resource efficiency guru Amory Lovins and economist Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta on the real cost of climate protection and building a new energy economy.

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Tags: amory lovins, climate change economics, climate change mitigation, energy efficiency, global warming and the economy, partha sarathi, rocky mountain institute, santa fe institute, winning the oil endgame

July 10, 2009

Climate Group Message to World Leaders: Global Emissions Reduction Targets Are Both Technologically and Economically Achievable

By Andrew Burger

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Looking to strengthen world leaders flagging resolve, a report by The Climate Group says that realizing the global CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets necessary to avoid the costs and strife of severe climate change are both technologically and economically achievable.

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Tags: climate+change, climate+change+business, climate+change+politics, CO2+emissions, emissions+reduction, g8+climate+change, L'Aquila+G8, The+Climate+Group

July 8, 2009

Yahoo! Pursues New Climate Strategy for Data Centers

By Chase Ezell

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Yahoo announces a change in direction in its policy of buying carbon credits to offset their energy-consuming server farms. Instead of buying carbon offsets, Yahoo plans to build a high-tech data center using more renewable energy.

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