Economically Green

Image via WikipediaValero Energy Corporation has spent $500,000 already in an effort to create a ballot initiative in California that would suspend the Golden State's aggressive climate law, known as AB 32. Valero, which calls San Antonio, Texas, home, has spent the money in part to get the 433,000 signatures required to get the initiative on November's ballot, which would suspend the law until California's unemployment rate goes below 5.5 percent.

According to EE News, the other contributors include:

San Antonio refiner Tesoro Corp. ($100,000), the anti-tax Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association ($100,000), World Oil Corp. ($100,000), Tower Energy Group ($100,000), Southern Counties Oil Co. ($50,000), and the Lumber Association of California and Nevada Political Action Committee ($5,000).

California has the most ambitious climate plan in the country, which aims to cut emissions and increase the use of renewable energy to 30 percent by 2020. Last week, the San Jose Mercury News published an op-ed that said in part:

Forecasting the results of a complex law whose full implementation is years off is nearly impossible. A more useful view of the law's potential upside can be gleaned by looking at who stands behind AB 32, and what it has already done for the economy.
Just about every Silicon Valley heavyweight supports the law: Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Intel, Applied Materials -- not to mention Whitman's former company, eBay. They all tout its environmental benefits and protections against global warming, but their bottom line is their own profitability.

The law's passage signaled that the clean-energy market will flourish long-term, opening the floodgates for investment in the sector, which nearly tripled, to $3.3 billion, in the two years after the law was signed. In 2009, 40 percent of cleantech venture capital went to California companies. While the overall number of California jobs shrunk 1 percent in 2007-08, the number of green jobs grew 5 percent.

Corporate power holding us back
The voters of California should be outraged that Valero is spending a half million dollars to maintain the business as usual in their state. The status quo will keep us transferring billions of dollars to other countries to buy fuel that is destroying the climate and keep us dependent on coal, the dirtiest fuel in the world. We need to speak out against Valero and other corporations that want to subvert democracy and keep us from creating a new clean energy economy.
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Cruise companies are balking at a proposal to create a low-emissions buffer zone around the United States and Canada, saying it sets arbitrary boundaries based on faulty science that overstates the health benefits.

Green Business

The proposed Emissions Control Area would extend 200 nautical miles, which is 230 statute miles, around the coast of the two nations and set stringent new limits on air pollution from ocean-going ships beginning in 2015.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. agency that sets regulations for ships operating internationally, is expected to adopt the proposal at its weeklong meeting that begins on Monday in London.

Cruise executives at an industry meeting in Miami said the plan would force them to switch to low-sulfur fuels that would dramatically drive up costs.

"Our estimate is that in today's market it's probably 40 percent more expensive," said Michael Crye, executive vice president of technical and regulatory affairs for the Cruise Lines International Association, known as CLIA.

It "essentially means all the current fuel that we burn cannot be burned within 200 miles," Stein Kruse, chief executive of Holland America Line, told the Cruise Shipping Miami conference.

Proponents, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, say the plan would clear the air around polluted port cities and save up to 8,300 lives a year in the United States and Canada. It would limit emissions of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, pollutants that are linked to asthma and cancer.

The Environmental Defense Fund activist group cheered the plan, saying "the dangerous air pollution from these floating smokestacks is a serious health threat to tens of millions of Americans who live and work in port cities."

But cruise executives say there is no reason to extend the boundary that far out to sea because the pollutants do not travel even a quarter of that distance, and that a more precisely tailored boundary would suffice.

They said the IMO research ignored the effects of prevailing winds, which push emissions ashore in some problem areas such as California, but push them away in other areas.

"Putting it out to 200 miles is completely arbitrary," said Kruse, whose line is part of Carnival Corp. "The reality is that the problem exists in a few very, very large cities."

CLEANING UP

The plan would require ships in the buffer zone to use fuel with a sulfur content of no more than 0.1 percent, compared with 2.5 percent in the fuel most ships now use, Crye said.

The IMO has already agreed to set the standard at 0.5 percent worldwide as of 2020, he said. Cruise officials contend the health benefits of the proposal were overstated because the IMO compared the proposed sulfur limits against current ones rather than against those already set to take effect in 2020.

Cruise ships comprise about 12 percent of the world's 46,000 commercial ships, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. They use the same type of fuel as freighters and tankers. Their impact can be large since they visit the same ports repeatedly.

Cruise executives say they want to be good environmental stewards and they support fair and logical regulation.

They say they have cleaned up their act, installing better wastewater treatment systems and adopting comprehensive recycling programs, following a few highly publicized prosecutions in the 1990s for dumping trash at sea and discharging oily bilge water.

They say their ships have been designed to be more fuel-efficient than older models and that they have voluntarily switched to using land-based power sources in some ports, rather than running their engines when docked in cities where air quality is poor.

They are also testing exhaust gas scrubbers similar to those used by many electric utilities on shore, CLIA said.

But industry officials feel they are being unfairly singled out. Some pulled ships out of Alaska after it levied hefty taxes and adopted pollution controls they viewed as excessive.

"The cruise ships are being held to a higher standard than any facility shoreside in Alaska," Kruse said. "We cannot even take on fresh water in some ports in Alaska because ... it has a higher copper content than what Alaska allows us to discharge in Alaska. That's how crazy it's gotten."

Cruise executives see the buffer zone as another example of overzealous regulation that threatens their industry.

"Some days you get up and you feel that new regulatory efforts are coming from almost every direction, from every government from every part of the world ... and that does propose a lot of issues for the industry," Carnival Cruise Line Chief Executive Gerald Cahill said.

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Federal limits on water that can be pumped out of a major river delta for California farmers are scientifically justified, a much-anticipated report said on Friday, a finding hailed by environmentalists in the state's epic water wars.

Science | Green Business

But the National Academy of Sciences stopped short of handing a decisive victory to environmental interests over agricultural interests. The academy said further study was required and that threats to Chinook salmon, delta smelt and other endangered fish were not entirely caused by the pumping.

"The Academy of Sciences report clearly validates the biological opinions," Ann Hayden, a senior water resource analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund, said of regulations devised under court order by federal wildlife biologists and issued in late 2008.

"It's time to stop pitting the economic interests of farmers against fishermen and move forward to find solutions," Hayden said. "We have pushed the Bay-Delta system to the brink of collapse and saving it -- and the jobs that depend on it -- is going to require increased cooperation among all interests."

A spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation said the report showed the need for "better justification of water restrictions" and that there were flaws in the Endangered Species Act.

THREE-YEAR DROUGHT

"We believe the government must do a better job of managing the delta pumps, to make more water available for people while still protecting the fish," said Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Wenger also singled out the study's conclusion that a number of factors, including sewage treatment plants and non-native fish, represented a threat to the protected species.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is at the center of California's long-running tug of war over water, which has become increasingly testy during a three-year drought that led to rationing, higher charges for water and mandatory conservation measures across the state.

Dramatic cutbacks in water deliveries by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and state Water Resources Department have idled thousands of farm workers and large swaths of farmland. The crisis prompted U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, to propose easing the environmental restrictions to allow the pumping of more water for growers.

Feinstein came under fire from environmental activists, fishing groups and even members of her own party. She dropped the plan after state and federal agencies, citing a series of strong winter storms that may signal the end of the drought, announced they would supply farms considerably more water this year than last.

Lawmakers have said they would await the National Academy of Sciences report, which was ordered by the Obama administration, before making further policy decisions.

On Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said irrigation districts south of the delta, which represent farmers on the west side of the state's fertile Central Valley, will get 25 percent of their contracted water allotment from the Bureau of Reclamation, up from just 5 percent in February.

The increase was issued ahead of schedule and comes at a critical time for the Central Valley, one of the country's most bountiful agricultural regions. California, the No. 1 farm state, produces more than half the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States.

The state water agency also boosted its allocation for all users to 15 percent, up from 5 percent last year.

The state supplies more than 25 million people and more than 750,000 acres of farmland with water from the delta.

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Steam-driven projects to extract crude from Canada's oil sands, often held up as more environmentally friendly than mining, have major drawbacks of their own that require more stringent regulation to fix, an environmental think tank said on Wednesday.

The Alberta-based Pembina Institute compared nine projects that employ "in situ" extraction methods -- where steam is pumped into the earth to liquefy the extra-heavy crude so it can be pumped to the surface -- and found all need to make improvements to varying degrees.

"The impacts of in situ have sort of been framed as low-impact oil sands development, but when you look at the data that isn't actually borne out," said Simon Dyer, one of the authors of the report, called "Drilling Deeper: the In Situ Oil Sands Report Card".

"Some of them indicate actually higher impact on a per-barrel basis than mining, for instance greenhouse gas emissions and sulfur-dioxide emissions and some of the cumulative impacts on land."

Projects were judged on general environmental management, land use, air emissions, water use and impact on climate change, and then given an overall score.

Open-pit mining gets most of the attention in the oil sands of northern Alberta, the largest crude deposits outside the Middle East. But the lion's share of the crude is too deep to mine, and must be extracted using in situ techniques.

Suncor Energy Inc's Firebag project took top marks with relatively low ratio of injected steam to oil produced and lower greenhouse gas emissions. But it scored just 60 percent.

The lowest mark of the nine, at 25 percent, was given to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd's Primrose/Wolf Lake development. The project has high steam-oil ratio and emissions and scored poorly on commitments to regional environmental initiatives, the report said.

A Canadian Natural official was not immediately available for comment.

Other projects studied are run by Imperial Oil Ltd, Cenovus Energy Inc, Husky Energy Inc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd. The average score was 44 percent.

"The main message is there's clearly room for improvement," Dyer said. "There's a wide range of performance, we don't have half the regulations that would necessarily drive implementation of best practices that are there currently."

Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert said he had not seen the report, although Dyer said it was sent to senior officials in the province's energy and environment departments Tuesday.

However, Liepert said Alberta's energy industry needs fewer regulations, a message he has repeated often since he announced results of a "competitiveness review" last week.

"We don't need more regulations. We have plenty of regulations in place to ensure that environmentally we are protecting Albertans. But in many cases it's simply taking too long, it's too duplicative and we'll deal with that," he told reporters.

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Green Infrastructure, Earth Day and Global Awareness

Spring 2010 is approaching and there’s a lot of buzz around topics like the economy, taxation, global poverty, restoration in Haiti/Chile, and lastly, green awareness. With spring, Earth Day also draws nearer (April 22nd); as individuals, we must remember and realize the importance of global warming and all of its implications. Subsequent topics discussed as of late include space travel/burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and green building. As nations like Haiti and Chile prepare for rebuilding and new construction, there are many things to consider when advancing. Moving towards cleaner, greener infrastructure is vital in ensuring a successful restoration campaign.

The U.S. Green Building Council is a 501(3)(c) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everybody. It’s one of the many organizations playing its role in green progression. Heavy discussion lies on green topics, especially the more recent ones like space travel; others include deforestation, green crops, clothing, energy, and much more. It’s important that we as individuals/citizens stay up-to-date on important global topics like warming. As organizations like the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative), AFH (Architecture for Humanity), and the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) conducts sustainability campaigns and enforce strict green constraints, our world will continue to become a better, cleaner place. Machines behind the CGI, Doug Band and Former President Clinton have been pursuing an emission reduction plan in the San Francisco Bay area. Meanwhile, CEO of GEC (Globetrotters Engineering Corporation), Niranjan Shah, is underway with green building projects in Chicago, IL. Despite these few national examples, green infrastructure, particularly in places like Haiti, has become an integral part of restoration and construction.

As polluters continue to buy their way out of Carbon Cuts globally, and large organizations continue to dump their waste into lakes, ponds and rivers, communities and must play their role in ensuring sustainability. Organizations like the CGI, AFH, and USGBC provide repercussion and policy change for acts such as. Most of the results from warming and climate change are miniscule and unnoticeable now, but our youth and earlier generations will experience firsthand the effects of pollutants and unsustainable efforts. Feel free to visit http://www.earthday.org/ to learn more about what you can do to support your world.

An environmental group has filed a U.S. lawsuit seeking to halt the construction and start-up of Renewable Energy Corporation's (REC) silicon plants in Moses Lake, Washington, the group said in a statement.

Green Business

Norway-based solar energy components producer REC, which took analysts and investors on a tour of its Moses Lake facility on Tuesday, was not immediately available for comment.

The group, which calls itself "RECisEXCEPTIONAL," says REC's expansion project failed to comply with safety and environmental requirements under the federal Clean Air Act.

"The lawsuit seeks to halt the construction, start-up and operations of two industrial facilities, known as Silicon III and Silicon IV," said the suit, according to a copy of the document posted on RECisEXCEPTIONAL's website.

The suit was filed in the U.S. district court in Spokane, Washington, by attorney Gregory McElroy, the group said.

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CO2 at new highs despite economic slowdown
Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations that braked industrial output, data showed on Monday.

Green Business

Carbon dioxide, measured at Norway's Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in the first two weeks of March from 393.17 in the same period of 2009, extending years of gains.

"Looking back at the data we have from Zeppelin since the end of the 1980s it seems like the increase is accelerating" Johan Stroem, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said of the data compiled with Stockholm University.

The rise in concentrations, close to an annual peak before carbon-absorbing plants start to grow in the northern hemisphere spring, was below the average gain over the year of around 2 parts per million.

"It still confirms the rise," Stroem said of the data from the first two weeks of March supplied to Reuters. Concentrations vary from week to week depending on the source of Arctic winds.

Carbon concentrations have risen by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution ushered in wider use of fossil fuels. A 2009 study of the ocean off Africa indicated carbon levels in the atmosphere were at their highest in 2.1 million years.

Recession in 2009 in many nations has not apparently affected gains. The International Energy Agency estimated in September that emissions of carbon dioxide would fall about 2.6 percent in 2009 because of a decline in industrial activity.

Concentrations can keep rising since each carbon molecule emitted typically lingers in the atmosphere for many years. The U.N. panel of climate scientists says the rise will cause more floods, mudslides, heatwaves, sandstorms and rising sea levels.

CLIMATE SCIENCE

The data "seem to show that we continue to emit as if there was no tomorrow," Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said of the carbon readings.

The build-up of carbon dioxide, also recorded since the late 1950s in measurements from a Hawaiian mountaintop, is one of the strongest elements of climate scientists' case that mankind is to blame for global warming.

Skeptics have cast doubt on the science since leaks of e-mails from a British university last year appeared to show that some climate researchers are intolerant of alternative views.

The U.N. panel of climate scientists, itself under fire for errors including an exaggeration of the pace at which Himalayan glaciers are melting, says it is more than 90 percent sure that human activities are causing global warming.

Carbon concentrations at Svalbard peak in April after rotting plants release the gas through the winter -- land areas in the northern hemisphere are far bigger than in the south. Levels decline when plant growth resumes in the northern spring.

Stroem said there were signs that the rise in concentrations in late winter was becoming bigger than in late summer. He speculated that could be a side-effect of global warming.

A gradual shrinking of ice and snow cover in the Arctic summer, he said, might mean more plants were able to grow and so absorb carbon, masking the rise in atmospheric carbon. The death of some of the extra vegetation in winter added to emissions.

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New York environmental regulators this week released a plan to protect aquatic life in the state's rivers that could cost power generators billions to upgrade their facilities.

U.S. | Green Business

The plan, which still needs final approval, would affect most of the state's six nuclear power plants and several facilities powered by fossil fuels that use water for cooling. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) wants the facilities to recycle and reuse the water in a closed-cycle cooling system rather than discharging the heated water into rivers.

One of the first plants to face the proposed regulations would be Entergy Corp's 1,910-MW Indian Point, located about 45 miles north of New York City where it draws water from the Hudson River. Entergy has already asked the DEC for a new water permit and requested that the federal government renew the license for both of its reactors.

The DEC, which is accepting comment on its proposal through May 9, said it would require closed-cycle systems -- like cooling towers -- unless "an operator can demonstrate that closed-cycle cooling technology cannot physically be implemented at a particular location."

In February, Entergy filed a report with the DEC that found it would be better to add new underwater screens to the plant's existing cooling water intake system rather than install expensive cooling towers.

The state however wants plants to use closed-cycle systems, which recirculate the water instead of discharging it after one use. The DEC said closed-cycle systems reduce the impact on aquatic life by more than 90 percent.

Like the other plants, Indian Point uses river water to condense the steam used to turn the turbines and generate electricity before returning the slightly heated water back to the river. The water used to make the steam remains in the plant.

Entergy said cooling towers, which can stand more than 600 feet tall and measure 300 feet in diameter, could not enter service before 2029 at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

The underwater screen meanwhile would take just three years to install and cost about $100 million.

Hence Entergy said the screens would better protect fish eggs and larvae over the 20-year period of a renewed Indian Point license, in large part, because they can be installed 12 to 15 years sooner than cooling towers. Entergy has said it hopes to get a draft water permit from the DEC in April that included approval for the screens.

Entergy is also waiting for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide on 20-year extensions of the reactors' original 40-year operating licenses, which expire in 2013 and 2015.

Entergy filed to renew both reactors' licenses in 2007. The NRC, which has made decisions on other renewals in 22 months without a hearing, has not said when it will decide on Indian Point.

Electricity traders noted contentious applications with hearings, such as Indian Point, can drag on for years.

The DEC plan would also affect other power plants in the state, including U.S. Power Generating's 1,290-megawatt Astoria, Mirant Corp's 1,139-MW Bowline, National Grid's 1,522-MW Northport, Oswego Harbor's 1,700 MW Oswego, TransCanada's 2,410-MW Ravenswood and Dynegy Inc's 1,200-MW Roseton.

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Germany's Catholic Church apologized to victims of child abuse by priests
Image by Catholic Church (England and Wales) via FlickrThe head of Germany's Catholic Church apologized to victims of child abuse by priests on Friday and met Pope Benedict who encouraged him to press ahead with tough new measures.Germany
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops' Conference, said his church would investigate numerous allegations of abuse in Catholic institutions, as well as counseling victims and taking measures to prevent abuse in the future.
But, amid calls within the Roman Catholic faith for a discussion of celibacy, Zollitsch strongly denied it was to blame, echoing comments made earlier in day by the pope himself.
"The German bishops are dismayed by what has happened and the acts of violence against children," Zollitsch said after a 45-minute private audience with the pope.
"A few weeks ago I asked forgiveness from the victims, something which I must repeat today in Rome."
Zollitsch said he had briefed Benedict about the situation in Germany, where more than 100 reports have emerged of abuse at Catholic institutions, including one linked to the prestigious Regensburg choir run by the pope's brother from 1964 to 1994.
"With great shock, keen interest and deep sadness, the Holy Father took note of what I had to say," Zollitsch told a news conference, adding they had not discussed Regensburg choir or Rev. Georg Ratzinger, who has admitted to slapping boys.
In a fresh development in Germany, the pope's former diocese in Bavaria said he was involved in a decision in 1980 to move a priest there who was suspected of child abuse.
The pontiff -- then Joseph Ratzinger -- jointly agreed to the priest undergoing therapy at a rectory in the diocese of Munich and Freising, where he was archbishop from 1977 to 1981.
However, rather than sending the priest for therapy as had been agreed, the diocese's then general vicar, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a Munich parish without restrictions. Gruber took full responsibility for the decision.
Zollitsch said he informed the pope of the German Church's plans for tackling the crisis, including the appointment of a special representative on abuse, and Benedict had encouraged the "decisive and courageous" adoption of the measures.
The archbishop said the German measures were separate from a rulebook being prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which oversees Catholic doctrine.
With the German Church still collecting information about the total number of abuse cases, Zollitsch also said it was premature to talk about compensation for victims.
"SEXUAL VIOLENCE"
The German lay movement, We Are Church, criticized the meeting for not spelling out concrete measures to be taken.
"Instead of apologizing to the victims from far-off Rome, Archbishop Zollitsch should go soon to meet victims, listen to them and seek ways and rituals of reconciliation with them," it said in a statement.
"It's unfortunate that Pope Benedict did not offer any words of sympathy for the victims or seek reconciliation with them."
It said the Vatican should "recognize sexual violence as a worldwide structural problem of the Catholic Church that increasingly obscures the message of Jesus."
As allegations multiplied in Austria and the Netherlands, the Vatican expressed alarm about the gravity of the crisis this week. Child abuse scandals in Ireland and the United States wreaked havoc on the Church's reputation and finances, with the U.S. Church paying some $2 billion in settlements.
The latest scandal is especially delicate for German-born Benedict, Munich's bishop from 1977 to 1981. With public opinion in Germany boiling as more cases of abuse emerge, the vice president of the Bundestag lower house, Wolfgang Thierse, called for him to apologize on behalf of those responsible.
Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a close ally of the pope, has called for the Church to discuss taboo issues such as celibacy, priestly training and changed social attitudes to sex.
But Benedict on Friday praised celibacy as "the sign of full devotion ... an expression of giving oneself to God and to others," making clear that there was no prospect of change.

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Stanford University

Greener plastics? It could be coming, thanks to a breakthrough by IBM and Stanford University scientists that could lead to the development of new types of biodegradable, biocompatible plastics. The discovery could also lead to a new recycling process that has the potential to significantly increase the ability to reuse and recycle common PET and plant-based plastics.

Disposable plastic bottles are among the most vexing environmental challenges. More than 13 billion plastic bottles are disposed of each year. While plastics are recyclable, the resulting materials are limited to "second generation reuse" only. This means the materials made from recycled plastic bottles are disposed in landfills. The IBM-Stanford breakthrough in green chemistry could lead to a new recycling process that reverses the polymerization process to regenerate monomers in their original state, reducing waste and pollution significantly.

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