Jul 23, 2012

LED retrofits cut a slice out of NYC’s energy costs | will save it $750,000 over 3 years.

I’ve often wondered how much energy New York’s myriad of buildings could save by doing simple things like replacing light bulbs. One commercial realtor has quantified what would happen if LED lighting was retrofitted into its properties, and the payback that it expects to receive is substantial.

Commercial property owner SL Green intends to install Seesmart LEDs in 21 of its buildings before the end of this summer. SL Green estimates that the retrofit, which replaces incandescent, halogen and fluorescent lights, will save it US$750,000 over three years.

Three years is all that it will take for payback due to lower utility and material/labor expenses. Seesmart builds have an estimated lifespan of 8 years, so the project will more than cover its cost. (Just imagine the savings when there’s national energy efficiency standards.)

“Lighting represents approximately 25 to 30 percent of total energy cost in the commercial real estate industry, and addressing lighting efficiency is a key ‘low hanging fruit’ cost savings opportunity,” Jay Black, director of sustainability at SL Green said in a statement. He added lavish praise for Seesmart.

Please continue reading at:

Population change and CO2 Emissions are not Correlated via @nextbigfuture

Population changes are a minor factor in CO2 emissions. The chart below shows that you can have an increase in population and a decrease in CO2 emissions. The bigger factors are GDP increases and the economy.

The group Population Matters pushes for draconian state controls on birth rates and on immigration because they feel that the first solution to CO2 emissions should be population policies.

Long-Term Trend in Global CO2 Emissions (2011, 42 pages, EU Commission)

Fossil fuel combustion accounts for about 90% of total global CO2 emissions excluding forest fires and woodfuel use. As the global economy rebounded strongly in 2010, both in mature industrialised countries and in developing countries, global energy consumption also saw a very strong growth of 5.6%, which is the largest annual growth since 1973 when the world was recovering from the recession caused by the first oil price crisis

Like Russia, Ukraine has seen a greater reduction in CO2 emissions since 1990 than laid out in the Kyoto Protocol - the reason being the collapse of national industry in the 1990s. The result was such a dramatic drop in emissions that in recent years, the country saw a welcome boost to state funds received from the trade of carbon emission quotas.

The reduction was not because of lower population.

Read more »

MIT Chip A Triple-Threat Power Harvester | @Earthtechling

...The MIT approach combines energy from multiple sources by switching rapidly between them. It doesn’t quite sound simultaneous, but Bandyopadhyay did say of the system, “we extract power from all the sources.”

The conquered another challenge, according to the university: driving down how much power the control circuit itself consumes.

The researchers made the system more efficient by using what the university called “an innovative dual-path architechture.” This means the system is able to build a up a charge in an energy-storage device (a battery or supercapacitor), which is customary – or it can bypass energy storage and directly power the device.

According to the abstract for the paper that describes the MIT research, published in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, this dual-path architecture “has a peak efficiency improvement of 11%–13% over the traditional two-stage approach.”

The abstract also reports: “A proposed time-based power monitor is used for achieving maximum power point tracking for the photovoltaic harvester. This has a peak tracking efficiency of 96%. The peak efficiencies achieved with inductor sharing are 83%, 58%, and 79% for photovoltaic boost, thermoelectric boost, and piezoelectric buck-boost converters, respectively.”...

Please read full and follow at:

Fuel Cell Treats Wastewater and Harvests Energy: Scientific American

A new microbial fuel cell creates energy during wastewater treatment and also vastly reduces the amount of sludge produced. Israel-based company, Emefcy, named as a play on the acronym for microbial fuel cell (MFC), starts with the same principle as most wastewater treatment—water is aerated so bacteria in the liquid break down organic material in a closed series of containers known as a bioreactor.

"We didn't invent anything scientifically new," says Ely Cohen, vice president of marketing and business development for the four-year-old company.

The novelty factor: instead of using electricity to push air into the water, Emefcy uses a permeable filter that allows air in but doesn't let liquid out, much like how a diaper works. The polyethylene plastic membrane, similar to materials used in construction, surrounds the fuel cell chamber into which wastewater flows.

Inside the fuel cell, Emefcy coaxes anaerobic bacteria, primarily Shewanella oneidensis and Geobacter sulfurreducens, to release electrons in an oxygen-free environment. The electrons flow to an anode and then into a circuit to cathodes in a separate chamber on the outside of the membrane. The electrons allow the carbon cathodes to react with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

The practical side of the Emefcy fuel cell relates to the materials engineering: both the anode and cathode are made of a carbon cloth that acts as a conductor. Precious metals have long been used as conducting materials in batteries and other types offuel cells but are too expensive to use at a commercial scale in microbial fuel cells.

For a typical paper-recycling factory, one Emefcy fuel cell module, which is about the size of a cubic meter, could treat about three cubic meters per day of wastewater depending on the amount of organic material present, according to Cohen, and the modules can be scaled to meet the needs of larger or smaller plants.

The bacteria eat a lot to produce electricity and live a longer life because the environment is optimized for their survival, so sludge can be cut down by 80 percent, Cohen says. Roughly four watts of electricity are produced for every kilogram of organic material that the bacteria consume. The amount of electricity generated will not exactly power the entire town, or even the entire processing facility, but it can offset the energy used to clean the water.

"The energy we don't consume is more important than the electricity we might produce," says environmental engineer Bruce Logan of Pennsylvania State University, an Emefcy advisor.

Please continue reading at:

Weight of Patients Becomes Workplace Safety Issue

Nurses, nursing aides and orderlies have borne the weight of the nation's obesity epidemic and suffered the consequences. They have gone home with aching backs and, in worst-case scenarios, ended up in hospitals themselves. Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY)
Go to the Full Story...

US Standards on Workplace Noise Trail Those of Other Countries

Noise levels recorded at nearly a dozen restaurants, gyms and bars in New York City reached heights that, if sustained over as little as two hours, would violate standards set by Fed-OSHA to protect workers' hearing. But even if the regulations were heeded, federal noise protection standards lag behind much of the industrialized world's. New York Times
Go to the Full Story...

Wisconsin governor tours drought-savaged state.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began a drought tour Friday as his state continues to grapple with fish kills, dying crops and water emergencies amid raging heat. On Wednesday, the Republican governor declared a state of emergency in all of Wisconsin's 72 counties because of abnormally dry conditions.

Please continue reading at:

IOSH Investigating General Mills Death

An inspector from Iowa OSHA arrived in Cedar Rapids Thursday to investigate the death of a worker at a local General Mills plant. On Wednesday, emergency personnel responded to the plant for a report of a man trapped between a piece of machinery and a safety post. KCRG (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
Go to the Full Story...

Where to put all our nuclear waste?

We have, in this country alone, something like 70,000 tons of high level nuclear waste -- 250,000 worldwide, give or take. What we don't have, here or anywhere else, is a place to put it all. And figuring that out means you have to convince people it'll be okay to store nuclear waste where they live.

Please continue reading at:

‘The radiation effects at Chernobyl will last 1,000 years...’

It’s hard to believe that the explosion at Reactor Four on April, 26, 1986, happened more than a quarter of a century ago.

But the children born long after its eruption are still living with the poisoned land and food grown in the two countries.

Alexander’s immune system has packed up. He was one of the so-called liquidators sent into the area immediately around Chernobyl to clear up.

One of those areas is the Red Forest. It used to be green like any other, but the pine trees turned ginger-brown after they died following the absorption of high levels of radiation.

Marian says: ‘Alexander and many others felled the trees and dug the trenches in which the trees were then buried. Then he buried the machinery used to fell the forest because it too was so highly contaminated.

‘All he was given was an apron with a little bit of lead in it and a pair of lead-lined boots.’

He stayed with Marian at her home in Blakemere Crescent, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, in April, because he has spent the past 26 years working tirelessly for the victims of Chernobyl. He wanted to see for himself what people like Marian and her team do for the children.

Marian first took in youngsters seven years ago. She’s not missed a year since. Every year she takes two lads for the whole of June.

‘I’d lost a son who was stillborn. My husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer. I was 39 and he was 49. I knew there would be no more children for us.

‘Two friends of mine answered an advertisement in The News desperately seeking a host family for two girls. I helped out and I realised this was for me.

‘Of course, like everyone else I knew about Chernobyl when it happened, but I had no idea about the effects of radiation which will last for 1,000 years...

Please continue reading at:

Endocrine Disruptors: A Toxic Result of Plastic pollution « EnviroDiscovery

The endocrine system is essentially the system through which our glands, lymph nodes, gonads, pancreas, and other hormonal organs operate. The instructions given by our endocrine system through different hormones cause many of the fundamental processes that keep us alive.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can alter the endocrine processes by simulating the chemical structure of a hormone or acting in a similar manner when processed through the body. Endocrine disruptors exist in nature, but the most toxic ones have been synthesized by man.

Understand that a small change in our endocrine system can have devastating long term effects on our emotional and physical health. So, this understood, endocrine disruptors must exist in small quantities in very few highly dangerous industrial conditions, right?

Wrong. The sad truth is that many endocrine disruptors exist in our everyday lives in the form of pesticides, dental sealants, perfumes, soaps, and common disposable plastics such as PVC and polyethylene.

PVC Pipes

Concentrations of ED’s are magnified as they go through the process of bioaccumulation up the food chain. If a plankton were to consume a small amount of an ED, and then a small aquatic organism ate that plankton, and then a small fish ate that organism, and then a large fish or a bird ate that organism, the animal at the top of this food chain would have a highly toxic amount of ED’s in their prey, so much so that the result could have significant developmental effects, sickness, or even death.

 

 

Trash in the North Pacific Gyre

In a strange twist on bioaccumulation, Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation skimmed the surface of the North Pacific Gyre using a fine-mesh net device over an area of more than 100 kilometers. He found six times more plastic by weight than naturally occurring zooplankton. Other researchers found that the plastic bits absorb and concentrate toxins such as PCB and DDE up to a million times their levels in ambient seawater. Birds and fish are ingesting the plastic because they mistake for zooplankton. Because the plastic is a PCB/DDE “magnet,” the animals consuming it are getting massive doses of Eds.

Please continue reading at:

China’s nuclear powered ocean floor mining station drills for oil, gold |

SmartPlanet -,China has revealed plans to send a luxurious, hotel-like, nuclear propelled massive underwater mining station to the depths of the Pacific, where it will drill for oil, gold, copper, zinc, lead and other metals smack dab on the seabed.

According to the South China Morning Post (free 2-week registration required), the China Ship Scientific Research Center’s mega-craft will house 33 “aquanauts” for 2 months at a time. It will not only drill for riches, but will also process the metals right there, way down below the ocean.

Race to the bottom. Who will get there first? China? Russia? U.S.? Japan? Maybe these bottlenose dolphins.

The paper reports:

Equipped with a nuclear reactor, the station would be able to support 33 crewmen for up to two months at a time.

“If a submersible were a plane, this station would be an aircraft carrier,” Ma Xiangneng , a researcher with the project, told China National Radio. “The station will be an underwater palace, with showers, a living room and laboratories.”

The designs show the station resembling a nuclear submarine, with two propeller fans at the tail. It would measure 60.2 metres long, 15.8 metres wide and 9.7 metres tall, weighing about 2,600 tonnes.

Like a space station, the deep-sea station would have multiple ports to support the docking of smaller manned or unmanned vessels.

Researchers such as Ma have said the station’s main purpose would be deep-sea mining. With an underwater “mother ship” hovering above the station, located just below the surface and undisturbed by weather conditions, mining facilities could be built much more quickly and cheaply than if surface ships were used.

It’s not clear from the story exactly how deep the floating roustabouts will plunge. It looks like anywhere from between 1,000 meters to 8,000 meters - nearly 5 miles. (At those depths, the showers in the luxury cabins should have plenty of pressure!).

Please continue reading at:

Fuel Cell Treats Wastewater and Harvests Energy: Scientific American

A new microbial fuel cell creates energy during wastewater treatment and also vastly reduces the amount of sludge produced. Israel-based company, Emefcy, named as a play on the acronym for microbial fuel cell (MFC), starts with the same principle as most wastewater treatment—water is aerated so bacteria in the liquid break down organic material in a closed series of containers known as a bioreactor.

"We didn't invent anything scientifically new," says Ely Cohen, vice president of marketing and business development for the four-year-old company.

The novelty factor: instead of using electricity to push air into the water, Emefcy uses a permeable filter that allows air in but doesn't let liquid out, much like how a diaper works. The polyethylene plastic membrane, similar to materials used in construction, surrounds the fuel cell chamber into which wastewater flows.

Inside the fuel cell, Emefcy coaxes anaerobic bacteria, primarily Shewanella oneidensis and Geobacter sulfurreducens, to release electrons in an oxygen-free environment. The electrons flow to an anode and then into a circuit to cathodes in a separate chamber on the outside of the membrane. The electrons allow the carbon cathodes to react with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

The practical side of the Emefcy fuel cell relates to the materials engineering: both the anode and cathode are made of a carbon cloth that acts as a conductor. Precious metals have long been used as conducting materials in batteries and other types offuel cells but are too expensive to use at a commercial scale in microbial fuel cells.

For a typical paper-recycling factory, one Emefcy fuel cell module, which is about the size of a cubic meter, could treat about three cubic meters per day of wastewater depending on the amount of organic material present, according to Cohen, and the modules can be scaled to meet the needs of larger or smaller plants.

The bacteria eat a lot to produce electricity and live a longer life because the environment is optimized for their survival, so sludge can be cut down by 80 percent, Cohen says. Roughly four watts of electricity are produced for every kilogram of organic material that the bacteria consume. The amount of electricity generated will not exactly power the entire town, or even the entire processing facility, but it can offset the energy used to clean the water.

"The energy we don't consume is more important than the electricity we might produce," says environmental engineer Bruce Logan of Pennsylvania State University, an Emefcy advisor.

Please continue reading at:

Brave new world as solar PV energy heads to 50c/watt


US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu earlier this year suggested that solar PV without subsidies will be cheaper than both coal and gas if it could get its costs down to around $1/watt by the end of the decade – an event that would trigger a total re-examination of the way electricity was produced in the world's largest economy.

That meant cutting the cost of modules to round 50c/W, and then bring the balance of module costs down with it. The latest research says that the module cost target will happen by 2016. Which also means that forecasts by Chinese officials and the Indian government that solar PV would reach wholesale parity with fossil fuels by 2020 (or 2017 in the case of India) are likely to occur even earlier.

GTM Research this week published the latest version of its five-year cost outlook for solar PV. Its first take was to admit that its previous predictions about costs, deployment and consolidation in the industry had been wildly misplaced. Like others, it has struggled to get its spread sheets around the stunning reduction in costs over the last few years, and misread the impact of feed in tariffs, consumer demand, and the ability of Chinese manufacturers to lower costs.

"How wrong we were," wrote GTM analyst Shyam Mehta. "We didn't really have an accurate, even semi-quantitative, understanding of the relationship between pricing, incentives, finance and demand." And by "we", GTM could include not just its own researchers, but nearly the entire global energy industry.

And predictions on how the solar market is going to play out are not getting any easier. "Truth be told, we are not a long way farther along in developing an understanding of the PV market than we were back in 2008," he writes.

But some things can be noted: "That industry has sheer momentum behind it in terms of interested, well-capitalized parties, that technology innovation will happen at breathtaking speed, helping to push c-Si (silicon-based) module costs toward the $0.50/W mark at 17% module efficiencies over the next half-decade.

"We also don't plan to underestimate the lucre that even cooling uncapped FIT markets still have, especially in an era when system costs are fast approaching $2.00/W. We also don't think that pricing and demand have a nice, simple relation in terms of elasticity: customers will wait to purchase equipment for months if they think prices will come down further, but then install gigawatts of PV in a few weeks if those weeks precede a major tariff reduction." (Hello Germany, Italy, and last week, Queensland).

The report includes a few notable graphs. The first is the cost path for module – now estimated at around 75c/W and heading down to 50c/W at a rate of knots. GTM, and most others in the industry, believe it will get to the 50c/W mark by 2016 at the latest, most likely 2015.


Please continue reading at

Richard Branson urges Obama to back next-generation integral fast reactor nuclear technology that President Clinton Cut in 1994

guardian.co.uk

Sir Richard Branson is urging the US government to help commercialise a controversial class of nuclear reactor, according to a letter seen by the Guardian asking for a meeting with President Barack Obama and US energy secretary Steven Chu.

The White House declined the meeting to discuss integral fast reactors (IFRs), which proponents say offer a way of dealing with nuclear waste, although no working commercial reactors are in operation.

But the move brings the intriguing prospect of a race to develop nuclear technology between Branson and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose new company TerraPower is developing another type of next-generation nuclear technology known as the travelling wave reactor.

"Obviously we urgently need to come up with a clean effective way of supplying our energy since not only are the dirty ways like oil running out but we need to do so to help avoid the world heating up," Branson told the Guardian.


Please continue reading at:

Why Is America Throwing Away $11.4 Billion a Year? - via @Forbes

forbes... A month or so ago, this column ran a pieceintroducing the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR), a recycling system wherein companies are responsible for collecting and recycling the packaging they create. The idea has the backing of big beverage industry players, including Nestle Waters North America and Coca-Cola, but the idea is that it would include all packaging, not just beverage containers, and so far other grocery manufacturers–those that make and sell cereal, canned foods, and so forth–are not on board. While the beverage industry has been taken to task time and again for its bottles and cans, other grocery manufacturers have so far avoided any sort of scrutiny around packaging. And while the beverage companies want more of their containers back so they can use them to make new containers with the high recycled content they've been promising in press releases for years, the grocery guys are under no such pressure.

Enter the NGOs. Today the As You Sow foundation, which uses shareholder advocacy to push corporations to prioritize sustainability and public health, released a comprehensive report on EPR, outlining the various reasons the system makes sense for the U.S. market. As You Sow senior director Conrad Mackerron makes several salient points in the report, which pulls together much of the research that has been done on EPR over the years, but the most compelling by far from a business perspective is the fact that the value of discarded packaging in the United States in 2010 was $11.4 billion. "We're talking about valuable stuff like aluminum–Alcoa can't get enough aluminum back–and PET plastic, which not only the beverage companies here want, but also the textile and automotive industries, both here and in China," Mackerron said.

Please continue reading at:

Teenager Unveils Plan to Turn Plastic Waste Into $78 Million of Biofuel! | @Inhabitat

inhabitat. - What Azza proposes is to break down the plastic polymers found in drinks bottles and general waste and turn them into biofuel feedstock. (This is the bulk raw material that generally used for producing biofuel.) It should be noted that this is not a particularly new idea, but what makes Azza stand out from the crowd is the catalyst that she is proposing. She says that she has found a high-yield catalyst called aluminosilicate, that will break down plastic waste and also produce gaseous products like methane, propane and ethane, which can then be converted into ethanol.

Speaking about the breakthrough, Azza said that the technology could "provide an economically efficient method for production of hydrocarbon fuel" including 40,000 tons per year of cracked naptha and 138,000 tons of hydrocarbon gasses – the equivalent of $78 million in biofuel.

Azza has already been making waves in the scientific community and has been presented with the European Fusion Development Agreement award at the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists. She is now looking to get her findings patented through the Egyptian Patent Office...

Please continue reading at:

‘The radiation effects at Chernobyl will last 1,000 years...’

It's hard to believe that the explosion at Reactor Four on April, 26, 1986, happened more than a quarter of a century ago.

But the children born long after its eruption are still living with the poisoned land and food grown in the two countries.

Alexander's immune system has packed up. He was one of the so-called liquidators sent into the area immediately around Chernobyl to clear up.

One of those areas is the Red Forest. It used to be green like any other, but the pine trees turned ginger-brown after they died following the absorption of high levels of radiation.

Marian says: 'Alexander and many others felled the trees and dug the trenches in which the trees were then buried. Then he buried the machinery used to fell the forest because it too was so highly contaminated.

'All he was given was an apron with a little bit of lead in it and a pair of lead-lined boots.'

He stayed with Marian at her home in Blakemere Crescent, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, in April, because he has spent the past 26 years working tirelessly for the victims of Chernobyl. He wanted to see for himself what people like Marian and her team do for the children.

Marian first took in youngsters seven years ago. She's not missed a year since. Every year she takes two lads for the whole of June.

'I'd lost a son who was stillborn. My husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer. I was 39 and he was 49. I knew there would be no more children for us.

'Two friends of mine answered an advertisement in The News desperately seeking a host family for two girls. I helped out and I realised this was for me.

'Of course, like everyone else I knew about Chernobyl when it happened, but I had no idea about the effects of radiation which will last for 1,000 years...

Please continue reading at:

Endocrine Disruptors 101: A Toxic Result of Plastic pollution « EnviroDiscovery


The endocrine system is essentially the system through which our glands, lymph nodes, gonads, pancreas, and other hormonal organs operate. The instructions given by our endocrine system through different hormones cause many of the fundamental processes that keep us alive.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can alter the endocrine processes by simulating the chemical structure of a hormone or acting in a similar manner when processed through the body. Endocrine disruptors exist in nature, but the most toxic ones have been synthesized by man.

Understand that a small change in our endocrine system can have devastating long term effects on our emotional and physical health. So, this understood, endocrine disruptors must exist in small quantities in very few highly dangerous industrial conditions, right?

Wrong. The sad truth is that many endocrine disruptors exist in our everyday lives in the form of pesticides, dental sealants, perfumes, soaps, and common disposable plastics such as PVC and polyethylene.

Concentrations of ED's are magnified as they go through the process of bioaccumulation up the food chain. If a plankton were to consume a small amount of an ED, and then a small aquatic organism ate that plankton, and then a small fish ate that organism, and then a large fish or a bird ate that organism, the animal at the top of this food chain would have a highly toxic amount of ED's in their prey, so much so that the result could have significant developmental effects, sickness, or even death.

 In a strange twist on bioaccumulation, Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation skimmed the surface of the North Pacific Gyre using a fine-mesh net device over an area of more than 100 kilometers. He found six times more plastic by weight than naturally occurring zooplankton. Other researchers found that the plastic bits absorb and concentrate toxins such as PCB and DDE up to a million times their levels in ambient seawater. Birds and fish are ingesting the plastic because they mistake for zooplankton. Because the plastic is a PCB/DDE "magnet," the animals consuming it are getting massive doses of Eds.

EPA Provides $950,000 To Improve Water Quality Using Green Infrastructure In 17 Communities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced recently that it is providing $950,000 to help 17 communities expand green infrastructure use to improve water quality and protect people's health and benefit communities. Green infrastructure uses vegetation and soil to manage rainwater where it falls, keeping polluted stormwater from entering sewer systems and waterways in local communities. The EPA funding is intended to increase incorporation of green infrastructure into stormwater management programs, protect water quality, and provide community benefits including job creation and neighborhood revitalization.

"Effective stormwater management is one of the most widespread challenges to water quality in the nation," said Nancy Stoner, EPA's Acting Assistant Administrator for Water. She announced the funds today at a stormwater symposium in Baltimore held by the Water Environment Federation. "Polluted stormwater can be harmful to the health of our nation's waterbodies. These funds will help expand the use of green infrastructure, revitalize local neighborhoods and help safeguard people's health and the environment."

Please continue reading at:

China’s nuclear powered ocean floor mining station drills for oil, gold | via @SmartPlanet

SmartPlanet -,China has revealed plans to send a luxurious, hotel-like, nuclear propelled massive underwater mining station to the depths of the Pacific, where it will drill for oil, gold, copper, zinc, lead and other metals smack dab on the seabed.

According to the South China Morning Post (free 2-week registration required), the China Ship Scientific Research Center's mega-craft will house 33 "aquanauts" for 2 months at a time. It will not only drill for riches, but will also process the metals right there, way down below the ocean.

Race to the bottom. Who will get there first? China? Russia? U.S.? Japan? Maybe these bottlenose dolphins.

The paper reports:

Equipped with a nuclear reactor, the station would be able to support 33 crewmen for up to two months at a time.

"If a submersible were a plane, this station would be an aircraft carrier," Ma Xiangneng , a researcher with the project, told China National Radio. "The station will be an underwater palace, with showers, a living room and laboratories."

The designs show the station resembling a nuclear submarine, with two propeller fans at the tail. It would measure 60.2 metres long, 15.8 metres wide and 9.7 metres tall, weighing about 2,600 tonnes.

Like a space station, the deep-sea station would have multiple ports to support the docking of smaller manned or unmanned vessels.

Researchers such as Ma have said the station's main purpose would be deep-sea mining. With an underwater "mother ship" hovering above the station, located just below the surface and undisturbed by weather conditions, mining facilities could be built much more quickly and cheaply than if surface ships were used.

It's not clear from the story exactly how deep the floating roustabouts will plunge. It looks like anywhere from between 1,000 meters to 8,000 meters - nearly 5 miles. (At those depths, the showers in the luxury cabins should have plenty of pressure!).

Please continue reading at:

U.S. House passes bill to boost rare earths production | H.R. 4402, the National Strategic and Critical Mineral Production Act of 2012


The U.S. House of Representatives has taken action to encourage more domestic mining of rare earth minerals that are vital to the production of advanced energy technologies.

H.R. 4402, the National Strategic and Critical Mineral Production Act of 2012, was passed last Friday by a vote of 256 to 160. 22 members of the Democratic Party caucus joined the Republican majority with most Democrats standing in opposition.

The bill streamlines the permitting process for mining companies by allowing them to negotiate timetables on reviews as well as expediting the review process. It also allows for less stringent enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act, an environmental law that requires environmental reviews of proposed federal actions.

"It is free mining, no royalties, no protection of public interest, exemption from royalty payments, near exemption from environmental regulations, near exemption of legal enforcement of the protections," New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rush Holt said.

Please continue reading at:

LED retrofits cut a slice out of NYC’s energy costs | will save it $750,000 over 3 years.

smartplanet....often wondered how much energy New York's myriad of buildings could save by doing simple things like replacing light bulbs. One commercial realtor has quantified what would happen if LED lighting was retrofitted into its properties, and the payback that it expects to receive is substantial.

Commercial property owner SL Green intends to install Seesmart LEDs in 21 of its buildings before the end of this summer. SL Green estimates that the retrofit, which replaces incandescent, halogen and fluorescent lights, will save it US$750,000 over three years.

Three years is all that it will take for payback due to lower utility and material/labor expenses. Seesmart builds have an estimated lifespan of 8 years, so the project will more than cover its cost. (Just imagine the savings when there's national energy efficiency standards.)

"Lighting represents approximately 25 to 30 percent of total energy cost in the commercial real estate industry, and addressing lighting efficiency is a key 'low hanging fruit' cost savings opportunity," Jay Black, director of sustainability at SL Green said in a statement. He added lavish praise for Seesmart.

Please continue reading at:

New biofuel process produces energy more than 20 times higher than existing methods.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A new biofuel production process created by Michigan State University researchers produces energy more than 20 times higher than existing methods.

The results, published in the current issue of Environmental Science and Technology, showcase a novel way to use microbes to produce biofuel and hydrogen, all while consuming agricultural wastes.

Please continue reading at:

Water pumping windmills 101 first used in 7 AD Persia

History of the windmill

Windmills have been around since the Middle Ages. The first recorded evidence of windmills being used for pumping water and grinding grain was in 7 AD in Persia. Then China got ahold of the idea and it spread to Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The European mill appears to have developed independently from the others because the design is so different. The predecessor to our modern windmill dates back to France in 1105 and England in 1180. In the 14th century, the Dutch took windmills to a whole new level with their "tower" mills using canvas sails stretched across four wooden lattice frames like a big X. Their objective was moving enormous amounts of water into higher basins and canals. By the end of the 16th century thousands of windmills were pumping and grinding in western Europe. By the late 19th century, the count was 30,000—and, miraculously, there was still enough wind to go around.

The American windmill

The American multi-bladed windmill bears little resemblance to its European counterpart. Unlike the Dutch "scoop" mills that could move 16,000 gallons an hour but only lift it 16 feet, the new Yankee design could lift water from hundreds of feet below the surface. It was invented in Connecticut in 1854 by a young mechanic named Daniel Halladay. Its wheel, made from wooden "sails," could be transported in sections and assembled on location.

Read on at: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ainsworth90.html

Jul 21, 2012

Obama rejects Smog Rules that Could Have Saved Thousands of Lives Annually

YALE360 - By declining to implement tougher regulations on smog last fall, President Obama rejected measures that could have saved several thousand lives a year and prevented millions of cases of asthma attacks and other acute respiratory problems, according to a new study. Reporting in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scientists from Johns Hopkins University said that the tougher smog rules would have prevented 2,400 to 4,100 additional deaths annually from cardiac and respiratory problems. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson was about to announce a new standard last fall that would have required a reduction in ozone concentrations from 75 to 70 parts per billion, but Obama rejected the change, saying it would have cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars for air pollution cleanup at a time of economic recession. Johns Hopkins scientists said the tougher standards for ozone, the main lung-irritating ingredient in smog, “would result in dramatic public health benefits,” particularly in large cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago

Please continue reading at:

Haase: Interesting we can always afford more military might... 

New @Intelex Case Study: Safety Management = 56% reduction in spills since 2009

We’re excited to share our recently released case study regarding BA Blacktop’s success with Intelex’s Quality Nonconformance and Standard Safety Incidents applications.  With unique objectives to streamline and unify their Quality and Safety management programs to improve tracking and monitoring processes, BA Blacktop turned to Intelex to help them achieve these goals.  The end result was remarkable, including a 56% reduction in spills since 2009, noticeable improvements in insurance premiums over the past 3 years, and 18% reduction in motor vehicle accidents since 2009 to name a few.

Jul 20, 2012

Congress Replacement of President Obama’s Offshore Drilling Plan #politics #green #energy - H.R. 6082

H.R. 6082 would establish a schedule for oil and gas lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) that would replace the leasing plan developed by the Department of the Interior (DOI) for the 2012-2017 period. The bill would direct DOI to auction leases in areas that are not included in DOI’s plan, including the OCS in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the North Aleutian Basin in Alaska. It also would require auctions to be held earlier and more frequently in certain OCS areas in Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Under H.R. 6082, the timetable for sales in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, which occur annually under current policies, would remain unchanged.

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 6082 would increase offsetting receipts collected from lease sales over the 2013-2022 period, thus reducing net direct spending by about $600 million over that period.

Read on at:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43466

Wisconsin DNR drought-related assistance - VIA @WDNR

The rain that fell in many parts of Wisconsin this week was a welcome sight, but the drought in Wisconsin continues and has been updated from severe to extreme by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Find answers and help to your drought-related questions by going to the DNR website and searching "http://dnr.wi.gov/emergency/drought/" target="_blank">drought," and on the Wisconsin Emegency Management ReadyWisconsin http://readywisconsin.wi.gov/drought/" target="_blank">drought resources Web page.

Ouch, eh! For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than Americans - #Politics

For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American, according to a report cited in Toronto's Globe and Mail. And not just by a little. Currently, the average Canadian household is more than $40,000 richer than the average American household.

Read on at: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/18/for-the-first-time-canadians-now-richer-than-americans

America on decline

  • 16 trillion dollar deficit
  • 14.9 unemployment
  • 50 million on food stamps
  • and more applying for disability than hiring for jobs.

The most underreported recent #environmental story "Massive decline in #energy related carbon emissions"

The most underreported recent environmental story has been the dramatic decline in energy-related carbon emissions — nearly back to mid-1990s levels, and falling. Maybe it's because that story just doesn't fit the left's mantra that traditional energy sources are destroying the environment. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) June energy report says that energy-related carbon dioxide fell to 5,473 million metric tons (MMT) in 2011.

Read more by By Merrill Matthews at:
http://news.investors.com/article/618435/201207171745/steep-drop-in-co2-is-due-to-industry-shift-to-natural-gas.htm

India water department wakes up to water contamination. - #CHMM

With a rising number of complaints of water contamination, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s water department has been instructed to take at least 1,000 water samples every day, which will be increased to 1,500 gradually.

Please continue reading at:

Study finds high groundwater contamination in Inland California water supply.

A federal study of the massive groundwater basins supplying much of the Inland region showed high levels of nitrate and perchlorate, contaminants that require expensive treatment to meet health standards before water is delivered to homes.

Please continue reading at:

ACA #Green Building Update - #LEED

ACA Green Building Update

In the growing maelstrom of green building standards and sustainability metrics, ACA has been a steady voice for workable indoor air quality standards for paints and coatings. ACA has a dedicated Green Building Workgroup to address emerging green building standards and codes that contain indoor air quality and chemical requirements for building materials, including architectural coatings, adhesives, and sealants. The workgroup engages in the development of green building standards and provides direction for ACA advocacy efforts on behalf of the industry.

The following provides an update of ACA and its workgroup’s recent activities on the green building front.

GSA Reliance on LEED

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is required to identify a green building certification program for use in the operation, design, construction, and major renovation of federal buildings. GSA previously adopted the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building program to help the federal government achieve its energy efficiency and sustainability objectives for public buildings, but is undertaking a review of different green building certification programs.

On July 10, ACA staff provided testimony during an online hearing on GSA’s review of green building certification programs for federal buildings. In its testimony, ACA urged GSA to take a flexible approach and recognize multiple rating systems that align with the federal government’s green building and energy efficiency goals, instead of granting a monopoly to LEED for federal building. ACA also pressed GSA to ensure that it adopts consensus-based standards.  ACA is deeply concerned that government agencies, such as GSA, will continue to adopt and incorporate non consensus-based green building standards — which may have a negative impact on U.S. manufacturers — into mandatory laws, regulations, and purchasing requirements.

ASHRAE 189.1 Proposal

ACA is involved in an ongoing workgroup under the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers’ ASHRAE 189.1 Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings. ACA’s efforts are focused on the ASHRAE 189.1 project committee to amend section 8.4.2.2 for interior paint and coatings to substitute the categories and volatile organic compound (VOC) limits from the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) 2007 Suggested Control Measure (SCM) for architectural and industrial maintenance (AIM) coatings in place of the current framework.

ACA’s proposal to amend the current paint and coatings standard in ASHRAE 189.1 has been accepted for further study, which gives the workgroup additional time to agree on an approach. 

As it’s now written: (1) paint, coatings, and primers applied on interior surfaces must comply with Green Seal’s GS-11 Standard, and (2) clear wood finishes, floor coatings, stains, sealers, and shellacs must meet the VOC content limits from California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) Rule 1113 AIM Rule. 

Florida Green Building Coalition

ACA has requested that the Florida Green Building Coalition amend its commercial and residential standards for paint and coatings.  The current standards include points for complying with Green Seal 11 and the SCAQMD Rule 1113 limits for different categories.  The Coalition tentatively agreed to substitute the CARB 2007 architectural coatings regulations for the existing piecemeal VOC limits in all of their standards, including residential and commercial. 

Please continue reading at:

Texans Sickened by 'Accidental' Gas, Oil, Chemical Emissions

 (ENS) - Flares, leaking pipelines and tanks emitted 92,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the air during accidents, break-downs and maintenance at Texas oil and gas facilities, refineries and petrochemical plants over the past three years, finds areport released today by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, EIP.

Based on data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a state agency, the EIP report shows that, in addition to the emissions from normal operations, more than 42,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and just over 50,000 tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds were released from 2009 through 2011. The report shows a "pattern of neglect" as the pollution from these events drags on for weeks or months.

Emissions from the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Texas(Photo by Mike Breaux)

Community groups, including the EIP, notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today that they will take the agency to court if it fails to crack down on this toxic pollution.

Please continue reading at:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)