NOTE: This blog was completed in 2007. Feel free to peruse the past posts if you wish.
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July 27, 2007 - Rail freight service to return in 2008, By Steve Hart, The Press Democrat |
State approves $13.6 million to repair Napa-Willits stretch of Northwestern Pacific Railroad The state on Thursday approved $13.6 million for the last phase of repairs to a 60-mile stretch of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, setting the stage for a return of freight service to Sonoma County next year. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070727/NEWS/707270342/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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July 26 - Solar subdivision, By Kevin McCallum, The Press Democrat |
When the time came for Kasey Capener to sell her Rincon Valley home and move into something less expensive and with a smaller yard, the 52-year-old nursery manager had no shortage of options. As sales of new homes have stalled along with the rest of the market, Capener was in a position to be picky, so she chose a home with an environmentally friendly feature none of the others had -- solar panels. "I really appreciate the opportunity to purchase a home that's going to make a difference," Capener said Wednesday at the grand opening of the first all-solar home development in Sonoma County. "If each one of us makes a different choice each day, things will shift." Capener was the first person to buy a home in the new Bridge Trail subdivision under construction in northwest Santa Rosa. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070726/NEWS/707260387/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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July 26 - GE to add 150 workers in Schenectady because of growth in wind power business, bizjournals.com |
General Electric Co. plans to add about 150 new positions in Schenectady by the end of the year as subsidiary GE Energy expands its Renewables Global Headquarters, the company announced Thursday. General Electric (NYSE: GE - News) said that it was making the expansion because of extensive growth of its wind energy business. Its 1.5-megawatt unit is one of the most widely used machines in the global wind power industry, according to the company, which expects to have over 10,000 of them operating around the world by the end of 2008. |
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July 25 - Automakers Push Fuel Efficiency Plan, By Ken Thomas, Associated Press Writer |
Automakers Gathering Support for National Fuel Efficiency Plan Automakers have joined forces with a broad group of manufacturers, business interests and labor unions to build support for an alternative plan to increase fuel efficiency standards. Reps. Baron Hill, D-Ind., and Lee Terry, R-Neb., said Tuesday they had more than 100 co-sponsors for their proposal, backed by automakers such as General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., that would require cars and trucks to meet efficiency rules of 32 to 35 miles per gallon by 2022. The auto industry opposes a more stringent measure in the House, authored by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., that would require vehicles to meet 35 mpg by 2018. The Senate has already approved an energy bill that would make carmakers reach 35 mpg by 2020. The lawmakers were joined by leaders with the United Auto Workers, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, who said families needed roomy, safe vehicles. The AFL-CIO and U.S. Chamber of Commerce also support the plan. PD NOTE: Are they kidding, 2022? Do they know how much havoc will happen by waiting until then? They really don't understand the consequences, in terms of both global warming/ecological destruction and peak oil. Increased efficiency is one of the EASIEST ways we can make a difference on these issues. It's amazing how people will cling to what is known, even if it's not really in their best interest. |
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July 25 - California Utility Agrees to Buy Power Generated by Solar Array, By FELICITY BARRINGER and MATTHEW L. WALD, New York Times |
Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern California's major utility, is announcing a commitment on Wednesday to purchase 550 megawatts of solar power to be generated by troughlike arrays of mirrors spread over nine square miles in the Mojave Desert. The purchase, one of the largest ever of solar power, will help the utility meet California's aggressive mandate that utilities have enough renewable sources online or under contract to supply one-fifth of the electricity they sell by 2010. The new solar plant is expected to begin producing energy in 2011 or 2012. This contract, along with similar ones recently signed by Southern California Edison, represents the resurrection of thermal solar arrays, a technology first deployed in the 1980s that failed in the 1990s because of the collapse in the price of natural gas. But with the price picture shifting and state mandates for renewable energy spreading, an Israeli company, Solel Solar Systems of Beit Shemesh, is betting that this technology will now pay off. The approach may lack the appeal of the more familiar rooftop photovoltaic cells, like the ones used in California's "Million Solar Roofs" campaign, but it costs only around half as much for each unit of energy produced. P.G.& E. executives said on Tuesday that during peak summer hours, power from the mirrors in the Mojave Solar Park Project would provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes. Fong Wan, P.G.& E's vice president for energy procurement, said in an interview on Tuesday that "we view concentrated solar as one of the most promising technologies for us." ...Electricity will be produced using a six-foot trough-shaped mirror that focuses rays of the desert sun on a pipe less than three inches in diameter, heating a fluid inside to 750 degrees Fahrenheit; the fluid will make steam to drive a turbine. Small motors will tilt the mirrors to keep them facing the sun. |
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July 25 - G.E. Unveils Credit Card Aimed at Relieving Carbon Footprints, By Claudia H. Deutsh |
Feel guilty about fueling up that gas guzzler or buying that box of incandescent bulbs? Would you feel better if, instead of frequent flier miles or cash, your credit card's rewards program allowed you to offset your role in global warming? For every $100 spent on an Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard, G.E. offers $1 in carbon offsets. General Electric is betting you will. Today, G.E. will introduce the GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard, which allows cardholders to forgo a 1 percent cash rebate on purchases and earmark that amount for projects that reduce greenhouse gases. In months when they feel short of money, cardholders can opt to contribute half and take half in cash. G.E. will keep a running tally of the amounts, and each Earth Day it will use the total to buy offsets of greenhouse gas emissions. The offsets will be purchased by GE AES Greenhouse Gas Services, a joint venture between GE Energy Financial Services and the AES Corporation, a power company. "G.E. has a commercial finance group that creates carbon offsets, a finance division that creates credit cards, and of course, Ecomagination," said Tom Gentile, chief marketing officer for GE Money, referring to G.E.'s program to develop green products. "We are in a perfect position to help people make a difference through their purchases." Environmentalists are not quite as sure. "It's ironic," said Michael J. Brune, executive director for the Rainforest Action Network. "G.E. supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create." Others worry about more direct conflicts of interest. At myearthrewards.com, the new card's Web site, consumers can calculate their carbon footprint and read tips for reducing it, like buying compact fluorescent light bulbs and energy-efficient appliances, items that G.E. sells. Moreover, G.E. is a big player in carbon offset projects, both directly as an investor and indirectly as a manufacturer of wind turbines and other alternative energy devices. Kevin Walsh, managing director of renewable energy for GE Energy Financial Services, said that G.E. is supporting only projects that have been certified by third parties to be effective and that would not have happened without carbon offsets. PD NOTE: An interesting idea, as long as we don't think it replaces the need for more serious action. Yes, there are questions about conflicts of interest to be check out, although there seem to also be some congruence of green activities by GE as well. Also, it does seem odd that GE keeps the cash and only distribute it once a year, making interest in between? ...The card will have no annual fee and will charge annual interest of 12.99 to 18.99 percent, depending on the cardholder's credit history. G.E. insists that even small purchases add up. Twenty-five cents &emdash; or 1 percent of a $25 purchase &emdash; can offset a month's emissions from a refrigerator. If someone charges $750 each month, 1 percent would come to $90 for the year &emdash; enough to offset air conditioning, driving and pretty much all of the activities that yield the 10,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases that G.E. says a consumer produces each year on average. "We are not sending a message that you can buy your way out of your environmental responsibility," said Lorraine Bolsinger, vice president of GE Ecomagination. "We're offering another tool in the kit for reducing carbon footprints." ...The idea is not unique to G.E. There are similar credit cards available in some parts of Europe. Matt B. Arnold, a co-founder of Sustainable Finance, a consulting firm, said he knows of five small groups negotiating with banks to offer similar credit cards in the United States. "G.E.'s announcement will probably accelerate those projects," he said. www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/business/25card.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Also see - GE, AES ramp up venture behind green credit card, By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch |
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July 24 - Keeping an eye on China, By Carol Benfell, Press Democrat |
Sonoma importer hires Hong Kong firm to tighten quality control on outsourced products
www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070724/NEWS/707240352/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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July 24 - Matt Damon Sides With Bourne Over Bond, By David Germain, AP Movie Writer |
Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne shares initials with another notorious screen operative. But other than that, Damon doesn't see any similarities between Bourne and James Bond. Bond is "an imperialist and he's a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it," Damon, 36, told The Associated Press in an interview. Damon's new film, "The Bourne Ultimatum," opens Aug. 3. "Bourne is this paranoid guy. He's on the run. He's not the government. The government is after him. He's a serial monogamist who's in love with his dead girlfriend and can't stop thinking about her," Damon said. "He's the opposite of James Bond." ... Damon said he bumped into former Bond star Pierce Brosnan in London and they chatted briefly about how the British super-spy's movie handlers were trying to update the character with last fall's "Casino Royale," which introduced Daniel Craig as Bond. Brosnan told him the aesthetics and style of Bond can be updated "but fundamentally, what the character is is something from the 1960s," Damon said. Paul Greengrass, Damon's director on Universal's "Bourne Ultimatum" and its 2004 predecessor, "The Bourne Supremacy," agreed that Bond is a relic from a different era. "He's an insider. He likes being a secret agent. He worships at the altar of technology. He loves his gadgets. And he embodies this whole set of misogynistic values," Greengrass said. "He likes violence. That's part of the appeal of the character. He has no guilt. He's essentially an imperial adventurer of a particularly English sort. "Personally, I spit on those values. I think we've moved on a little bit from all that, the martini shaken, not stirred." PD NOTE: I find this point of view very refreshing, especially given how many men have been trained to aspire to James Bond's style. How interested to see Bond's behavior as a personal expression/dimension of this culture's larger empire mentality of conquer, kill, and take pleasure for oneself without caring about the impact on others. Not as fun for those on the receiving end of the program. |
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July 23 - GE to Unveil First Credit Card Dedicated to Reducing US Cardholders' Carbon Emissions on July 25, GE |
On July 25, GE leaders and environmental influencers will come together in New York to launch the first credit card in the US with rewards dedicated to reducing cardholders' carbon emissions. A distinguished panel will discuss the "greening" of consumer finances and the impact of the card on the environment. |
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July 19 - Conoco CEO calls for new fuel incentives, By Chris Baltimore and Michael Erman , Reuters |
ConocoPhillips on Thursday warned the U.S. Congress against imposing new taxes on big oil companies, and called for federal incentives to encourage new types of fuel production. In a wide-ranging policy speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, James Mulva, chairman of the third-biggest U.S. oil company, said tax hikes being weighed by Congress would hurt consumers by discouraging production from U.S. oil basins. "Too often our government works to punish American companies," Mulva said, warning that such proposals would "cut into the funds needed for investment by the very companies that can lead the way on energy development." Democrats in the House of Representatives want to offer about $16 billion worth of incentives to produce energy from renewable sources like solar and wind. Big Oil would foot most of the bill in the form of higher taxes, and a repeal of some favorable tax treatment. Instead, for companies that build plants to get liquid fuel from coal, oil shale, methane hydrates or other unconventional liquid fuel sources, Congress should extend federal price guarantees over 10 years up to a limit of 1 million barrels per day of production, Mulva said. The United States currently uses about 9 million bpd of gasoline. "This would offer the fiscal certainty that would enable new projects to be built," Mulva said. Mulva also warned Congress against pressing ahead with a Senate-approved plan that would allow the federal government to sue the OPEC producers group for price manipulation. "We should not antagonize or threaten these countries," Mulva said. Still, he stressed that U.S. oil companies are increasingly competing against national oil companies that benefit from the friendly policies of their own governments. www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN1942565920070719?rpc=44 |
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July 19 - Oil Demand to Overtake Supply by 2030 -- Report, Seeking Alpha |
Demand for oil could exceed supply by 13 million bbls/day by 2030, according to a new study that warned of 'accumulating' risks to energy production and encouraged the use of alternative fuels. Among the risks cited were geopolitical barriers, higher costs, fewer petroleum engineers and growing constraints on carbon dioxide emissions. The 476-page study, titled "Facing the Hard Truths About Energy," involved 350 participants and was led by former Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond. "There is no quick fix [to the problem]," Raymond said. Data collected showed that global production may reach 105-110 million bbls/a day by 2030, an amount that is 11% below U.S. government forecasts for daily demand of 118 million bbls. The National Petroleum Council, an advisory group that conducted the study in response to a request from U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, approved the report on Wednesday. "We need energy efficiency, we need to moderate the rate of growth of demand. We need diversity of suppliers and of supplies," Bodman said in response to the report. Top industry executives, private research centers, academic institutions, banks, government agencies and environmental groups also contributed to the report. The study noted that the world was not running out of energy resources, indicating that coal, oil and natural gas would be important resources for meeting increased energy demand. Among the stated recommendations are improving energy efficiency and pursuing unconventional sources of energy such oil from tar sands and shale formations and non-petroleum fuels such as ethanol. The council also urged the U.S. government to start regulating greenhouse gas pollutant carbon dioxide and setting a high enough cost for CO2 emissions to encourage companies to curb them. PD NOTE: This reports describes the problem of demand surpassing supply, and the need for efficiency and control of greenhouse gases. However, it puts the problem off well into the future - contrary to the other key experts who assess that we're at or have even passed the peak supply of oil, as demand is nearly equal and continues to increase. Interesting that Exxon's former chair led this study.... |
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July 19 - Investing: An Oil Stock for a Grim New Reality, By Jim Jubak, MSN Money Markets Editor |
"World will face oil crunch in five years." That's not exactly the kind of headline you want to read when crude oil is already at $73 a barrel. When things are this bad -- crude prices are up 12% in the past two months as of July 12 -- you don't want to hear that they're going to get worse. Yet that's exactly what consumers -- and investors -- should expect, the International Energy Agency said in its latest Medium-Term Oil Market Report, issued July 9. The market for oil will get even tighter over the next five years. (And in case you're looking for a way out, natural-gas markets may be even tighter still.) As much as I'd like to believe that the agency has made a mistake, the logic behind its pessimistic assessment of supply and demand is impeccable. In the best case, the International Energy Agency calculates, supply will grow at 1% annually. Even that might be optimistic, though, because global oil production grew by just 0.4% in 2006. That creates just a teeny-weeny problem, because the agency projects that demand will grow by 2.2% a year over the next five years. ...This big squeeze is coming from both the demand and supply ends of the oil market. Higher oil prices so far have not led to lower consumption. That's what's supposed to happen, right? As oil and gasoline get more expensive, people should use less, economic theory says. But not this time. Why? Lots of reasons: * Not everyone is convinced that high prices are here to stay, so changing behavior radically doesn't seem worth it. * A lot of consumption is built into the infrastructure of how we live: If you've got to drive to work, you've got to drive to work. * Reducing consumption can require a long lead time. The next car purchased will be more fuel-efficient, for example, but that could be years away. * Some consumption is subsidized, so higher prices haven't yet fully hit the market in places such as Iran, Venezuela, Indonesia and China. * And the U.S., which accounts for 25% of global oil consumption, still doesn't have a national program to reduce demand for oil. The sad fact is that we now use 15% more oil than in 2000. Developing economies create the biggest addition to global demand. Many consumers in China and India and elsewhere are just now getting paid enough to join the global market for cars, electrical appliances and air travel. Oil consumption in China, for example, is growing at more than 7% a year. But that's an old story. The crisis that the International Energy Agency is trumpeting now comes from the supply side. Thanks to years of underinvestment, mismanagement, lack of technology or political interference -- or all of the above -- oil production is dropping faster than anyone expected at some of the world's biggest oil exporters. In 2006, oil production fell by 6.9% in Norway, 10% in the United Kingdom (which shares North Sea oil fields with Norway), 2.1% in Mexico and an estimated 5% in Venezuela. In all of those cases, the rate of decline is accelerating. The problem is geology, not politics (as it is in places such as the Niger Delta, where a collapse of order has shut down 25% of Nigeria's oil production). Any fix for a geologic problem is expensive and can take years to implement. ... Let me use Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field, the world's second-largest by production, as an example of the extent of the problem. ...You can debate whether the world is running out of oil all you want. It is certain, however, that the world has run out of cheap oil. www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/investing/10368336.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA |
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July 19 - Digging learning, By Robert Digitale, Press Democrat |
In hills above Occidental, teachers discover how to make a garden into a classroom ...Phipps has joined in a new $15 million effort to get more California public school children to learn by gardening. The money allowed Phipps and 20 other teachers to take a five-day training program this week in the hills above Occidental. The training deals with practical advice for creating a garden, as well as how to use it to help educate students in such subjects as science, nutrition, math and language arts. "It's hands-on learning," Phipps said. "You can teach them so many different concepts out there." This year the state already has agreed to provide nearly $11 million for school gardens, plus equipment, plants and training. A new School Garden Advisory Group will recommend to state schools chief Jack O'Connell how to spend another $4 million provided in legislation sponsored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. Half the state's eligible school districts, charter schools and county offices of education have applied for funds. A typical elementary school receives $2,500. Schools with more than 1,000 students receive $5,000. Those involved hope that students who tend a garden will taste its fruits and vegetables and consider the importance of a balanced diet. "It's just a healthy way for students to learn," said Deborah Beall, a coordinator of the garden program for the state Department of Education. Fifteen county schools are using the state funds to send educators to training sessions this summer at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. Each school sends at least two staff members. The center partnered this spring with the Sonoma County Office of Education to help 22 schools receive state garden grants. www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070718/NEWS/707180332/1033/NEWS01 |
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July 14 - Cool As Ice: Technology Relies on Ice to Chill NYC Office Towers, By Colleen Long, Associated Press Writer |
System Relies on Ice to Chill Buildings NEW YORK -- As the summer swelters on, skyscrapers and apartments around the city will be cranking up the air conditioning and pushing the city's power grid to the limit. But some office towers and buildings have found a way to stay cool while keeping the AC to a minimum -- by using an energy-saving system that relies on blocks of ice to pump chilly air through buildings. The systems save companies money and reduce strain on the electrical grid in New York, where the city consumes more power on hot summer days than the entire nation of Chile. It also cuts down on pollution. An ice-cooling system in the Credit Suisse offices at the historic Metropolitan Life tower in Manhattan is as good for the environment as taking 223 cars off the streets or planting 1.9 million acres of trees to absorb the carbon dioxide caused by electrical usage for one year. Such a reduction in pollution is valuable in a city where the majority of emissions come from the operation of buildings. State officials say there are at least 3,000 ice-cooling systems worldwide. "It is worth it to do in New York City," said William Beck, the head of critical engineering systems for Credit Suisse. "If you take the time to look, you can find innovative ways to be energy efficient, be environmental and sustainable." Because electricity is needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large silver tanks at night when power demands are low. The cool air emanating from the ice blocks is then piped throughout the building more or less like traditional air conditioning. At night the water is frozen again and the cycle repeats. Ice storage can be used as the sole cooling system, or it can be combined with traditional systems to help ease the power demands during peak hours. At Credit Suisse, for example, the company must cool 1.9 million square feet of office space at the Met Life tower, a historic building that was New York's tallest in the days before the Empire State Building. ..."I've been doing green since before it was cool," he said. "The idea of not only saving money for large companies, but doing something that benefits the environment is win-win. It's doing the right thing." Engineers say the power-saving results from the system are impressive. And it translates into millions of dollars saved in energy bills for the companies. ...Both companies received incentives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority under a program designed to improve the power grid and help businesses reduce operating costs. The technology isn't for every office space. There has to be room to install the large tanks. And costs are considerable: Credit Suisse spent more than $3 million to renovate its cooling system; and Morgan Stanley's costs were comparable, which means the technology is best suited to large companies. "This is for companies that want to go green but that there has to be other benefits, returns on investments," Coulard said. "It works for larger companies because their cooling costs are so considerable." |
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July 13 - Winemakers keep weather eye on climate, By Sam Wilson, BBC News, Napa Valley |
Creating wine is all about getting the balance right. You have to find the best location, with good soil, the right range of temperature, and rain at certain times of year. You must plant the right grapes. And then you must get lucky with the weather. Napa Valley's temperature range makes it ideal for wine grapes So it is no wonder that winemakers are especially aware of the issue of climate change. Some studies have suggested that the wine map could be changed completely if global warming proceeds apace over the coming decades. ...A study by the America's National Academy of Sciences last year suggested that the area of the US suitable for growing premium wine grapes could decline by 81% by the end of the century. Findings like that have alarmed wine industry figures around the world. ...At Napa's Sinskey Vineyards, they believe the worst-case scenarios are alarmist. "The sensational aspects that you hear - that's doom and gloom," says owner Robert Sinskey. ...As a farmer who has seen many unexpected weather events in his time, he is reluctant to say definitively that the climate is in flux. "What we can say is we have an impression that change is happening. Are we in crisis mode? No we're not." ... Napa's refusal to panic over climate change does not mean it is unconcerned, however. ... In Sinskey's case, it means trying to make practices as environmentally friendly as possible. Walking round the vineyard, winemaker Jeff Virnig shows how he allows grass and plants to grow between the vines, to recycle organic material into the soil. The grass is grazed by sheep. "One of the reasons we've gone to organic farming practices is we figured we'd be better able to buffer against extremes of weather," says Mr Virnig. By raising the level of organic material in the soil, he explains, it can hold more water, which is useful both in dry and wet periods. The winery is also decked with solar panels, that produce 75% of the power needed on the site. Its trucks and tractors run on biodiesel. ... Robert Sinskey believes that as someone who makes a living off the land, he has a responsibility to work in "the most efficient, least intrusive way possible". He says that also makes good business sense. "Our customer base are highly educated. If they're not practising green, they're thinking about it. If we can inspire in any way and also be true to the spirit, and non-damaging, there's a security in doing business that way." And if the worst-case scenarios come to pass, getting the right acidity and crispness in his pinot noir will be the least of his problems. "If we were to see dramatic change, we'd have to kiss our business goodbye," he says. "But I think there'd be bigger concerns than our business. We'd be concerned about basic survival." |
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July 11 - US grassroots tackle climate change, BBC News |
PD NOTE: Our local folks and activities in the international news! The US government may have refused to throw its weight behind efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but Americans are increasingly acting on their own initiative. In the latest in a series on changing US attitudes to global warming, the BBC's Sam Wilson profiles three grassroots ventures in the state of California. SOLAR SEBASTOPOL California's generous endowment of sunshine gives it a golden opportunity to exploit solar power, but the town of Sebastopol, north of San Francisco, has been particularly energised. Its goal is to install one megawatt of solar power production across the town - equivalent to decking the roofs of 500 average-sized homes with solar panels. It is over a third of the way there, with 380kW-worth of panels fitted so far on local government buildings, businesses and homes. One of the most eye-catching adorns the roof of the town's open-air swimming pool. Sebastopol's Mayor Sam Pierce describes it as a "very aggressive effort, by both the city and the community", to tackle global warming. His city council has also set itself a target of reducing its own emissions by 42% over a 10-year period - the most ambitious target in the US and far ahead of those demanded by the Kyoto Protocol. ...BIOFUEL OASIS, BERKELEY Biofuel Oasis is an all-female co-operative in Berkeley, which serves as a retail outlet for biodiesel. The fuel is converted from waste cooking oil from local restaurants, and sold to customers willing to pay a little more than the regular diesel price. ... COOL SCHOOLS, SONOMA COUNTY Sonoma County in northern California has taken it upon itself to reduce its carbon emissions 25% below its 1990 level by 2015 - one of the toughest targets in the US. Sonoma's Climate Protection Campaign (CPC) is aware that to reach its objective, the county has to act on every level - not least in schools. "It's young people that have to take on the burden of this issue," says Jessica Kellett, co-ordinator of the CPC's Cool Schools programme. "We need to have young people to be leaders today - not just to be educated but to understand how to start engaging with elected officials, with their parents, because we need to be taking action now." By promoting walking, biking and car-pooling, they reduced single-passenger car journeys by 21%. "When you're at school you get your licence, so you want to hop in the car and drive everywhere," says 17-year-old Christine Byrne, who does her best to resist the temptation and cycle whenever possible. "Through the educational programmes that we've begun, like Cool Schools, people are becoming more aware. It's slowly beginning to grab more people." |
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July 10 - Congress Needs to Take a Shine to Solar, Viewpoint, by Travis Bradford, Business Week |
Momentum to create domestic sources of renewable energy is growing. But to make it catch fire nationwide, Washington must pass legislation Are traditional energy utilities casting a shadow on solar power? Nationwide, nearly one megawatt (1,000 kilowatts) of new solar energy capacity is being installed per business day. Yet it's not happening uniformly across the country, not even in many states where sunshine is abundant or where the nation's fastest population growth is driving more demand for all kinds of electricity. Take Arizona. With nearly 300 days of sunshine a year, Arizona leaders put in place legislation that requires traditional utilities to generate 15% of their electricity from solar and other renewable energies. Despite such clear legislative mandates, the state's utility regulator, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), is considering rules that may stifle the deployment of solar systems in one of the nation's sunniest states. The ACC's proposed rules for supplying extra solar power to the local utility's electrical grid would effectively discourage a large retailer or even a smaller business from installing more than 100 kilowatts of solar panel capacity on its property. That's because there would be little payoff for that business in selling any more than 100 kilowatts of unused electricity produced during off-peak hours for that business. With such a cap, only businesses with very small physical buildings will consider deploying solar, and most of the effective solar demand will go unmet in Arizona. Bogged Down by Rules Why, despite its legislated goal to increase the use of renewable energy, would Arizona prevent its own solar industry from doing business within its borders? This is just one example of the exceedingly complex state-by-state rules governing not just interconnection, but the accounting for the electricity supplied to that grid by would-be solar producers and the rates they're paid for it. This complexity effectively deters businesses and home owners from installing solar power-generation systems. This, in turn, hurts demand for solar-energy service providers such as Sun Edison and solar panel makers such as BP Solar, First Solar (FSLR), and Evergreen Solar (ESLR). In June, the U.S. Senate had a chance to speed the deployment of solar energy. Yet, in a surprising compromise on the federal energy bill, the Senate abandoned a provision to encourage nationwide deployment of most forms of renewable energy. Bowing to lobbying pressure and the political realities of compromise, the Senate jettisoned a comprehensive $32 billion package of incentives that would have dramatically improved the prospect of solving our nation's addiction to fossil fuels. These incentives for clean energy were to be paid for by reductions in subsidies given to oil producers. The Senate's failure to truly support solar is highly disappointing. Yet the momentum toward creating cheaper, cleaner, and domestic sources of vital energy from renewable sources continues to grow. The prospect&emdash;and demand&emdash;for future renewable energy legislation still exists. However, the raw political power displayed by fossil fuel producers during the energy bill debate adds new urgency to the discussion of how to create rules and incentives that strengthen the commercialization of renewable energy. Those decisions will define our future as we grapple with accelerating energy, economic, security, and environmental challenges. ...But when the rules are not clear, as in Arizona and even Florida (the Sunshine State), very little solar generating capacity is deployed. Should utilities be allowed to take advantage of tax credits for deploying their own solar capacity while this regulatory patchwork remains in place, the effect would be to empower them to capture market share with one hand while keeping competition out with the other. To avert such an outcome, Congress needs to adopt national best practices for interconnection, metering, and rates similar to those implemented in Colorado, New Jersey, Maryland, and California. In short, if utilities are going to be allowed federal tax incentives to enter the solar market, then that market should be open to anyone else wanting to serve it. Let's get on with using this moment in history to create an energy policy that promotes competition and speeds the deployment of clean, cheap, local sources of energy rather than encouraging more of the same from last century's lobbyists. www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2007/tc20070710_273201.htm?campaign_id=yhoo |
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July 5 - "Accumulating risks" to world energy supply: NPC, By Chris Baltimore, Reuters |
WASHINGTON - The world is not running out of hydrocarbons but there are "accumulating risks" to securing global crude oil and natural gas supplies through 2030, a high-level board of U.S. oil company executives found in a report obtained by Reuters on Thursday. Those risks include "political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of trained work force," according to the study by the U.S. National Petroleum Council, conducted at the behest of U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman. The NPC, whose members include executives of big oil companies like ExxonMobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Chevron Corp. (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research), will present the study at its July 18 meeting, according to a memo sent to NPC members this week which was also obtained by Reuters. When Bodman called for the study in October 2005, he asked the council to study the concept of "peak oil," whether the globe was running out of hydrocarbons. "Perspectives vary widely on the ability of supply to keep pace with growing world demand for oil and natural gas," Bodman wrote at the time. In a draft letter to Bodman outlining its findings, the group says, "The world is not running out of energy resources, but there are accumulating risks to continuing expansion of oil and natural gas production from the conventional sources relied upon historically." The group calls for "a new assessment of the global oil and natural gas endowment and resources to provide more current data for the continuing debate." The council, formed in 1947 at the request of former President Harry Truman, is chaired by Lee Raymond, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil. The group also debunked the idea that the United States can wall itself off from dependence on foreign oil suppliers like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, a notion popular with some U.S. lawmakers. "The concept of energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future," the study says. The study calls for boosting energy efficiency across all sectors -- including transportation -- and expanding energy sources like coal, nuclear, biomass and unconventional hydrocarbon sources. To address global warming, the group said U.S. policymakers should draw up a legal and regulatory framework to allow heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions to be collected and "sequestered" in underground reservoirs. The only mention of OPEC - the producers group that controls a third of global oil exports - is in a footnote. www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN0533492520070705?rpc=44 |
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July 5 - Stockpickr: Trade Like Al Gore, By James Altucher, RealMoney.com Contributor |
Al Gore has woven his eco-philosophy into every aspect of his life from politics, where he's considered a possible presidential candidate for 2008; to media (his Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth and his Current TV), and now to financial management. Along with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood, Gore started Generation Investment Management, an investment firm with more than $1 billion under management that focuses on companies that "create value and sustain competitive advantage." Gore states, "Integrating issues such as climate change into investment analysis is simply common sense." At Stockpickr, we set up the Al Gore Generation Investment Management portfolio so investors can see which companies Gore and Blood believe are the most "sustainable" and have an economic advantage over their competitors. Sustainability for Gore and Blood means not just companies that are eco-friendly, but that also have a culture of ethical responsibility toward their employees and their customers. They state: We research sustainability themes that have the potential to impact the long-term operating context for business such as: * Climate change * Pandemics/ HIV/AIDS * Poverty / Real Needs * Water * Human Capital * Lobbying * Corporate Governance * Stakeholder Engagement * Bribery/ Corruption * Demography/ Urbanization http://stockpickr.com/port/Al-Gore-Generation-Investment-Management/ |
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July 4 - Tech Firms Tap Into the 'Green' Movement, AP |
Technology Companies' Environment-Friendly Approach May Not Always Lead to More Cash Being "green" is all the rage with technology companies these days, but what's not clear is whether or not the environment-friendly approach is bringing in more greenbacks. Tech buyers say they desire devices that are kind to the environment, but they haven't shown a strong predisposition to buy them -- except when it saves them money. "There's high-level awareness and low-level activity," said Christopher Mines, an analyst at Forrester Research. "The goal is to feed into it ... and try to take advantage of the growing concern." Among those able to successfully tap into those concerns are computer hardware companies like Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp., Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co., Armonk, N.Y.-based International Business Machines Corp. and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which have all been churning out servers or server components that require less power -- and thus less money to operate. However, other green initiatives by technology companies, such as running environmentally oriented contests or planting trees, don't have a direct line to the pocketbooks of client companies' chief investment officers, making those initiatives ring a bit hollow. ... The hype surrounding being green has even spawned a new word -- greenwashing -- harkening back to the days when the buzzword was "dot-com." Just like those days, the environment presents an opportunity for technology companies, either by selling into it or using it as a marketing tool. PD NOTE: Nope, greenwashing is an old word, not newly coined, just heightened in appropriateness. ..."If the computer is up to snuff and the price is about the same, it helps" to be green, says Howard Anderson, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business, noting that technology companies seem to have different shades of green. "If Nokia and Motorola are green, then why haven't they invented phones that use less battery-charging?" http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070704/technology_green_approach.html?.v=2 |
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July 3 - Going Green, Forbes, Edited By Dan Bigman 07.03.07, 6:00 AM ET |
Holy tipping point! Some time in the last year, environmentalism became the new plastics, and--bam--the corporate world is on a stunning green tear. But what's a fad and what's real? In Going Green, we draw lessons from how companies such as BP, Starbucks and MTV are navigating. We find it isn't easy being green--even for leaders with a 25-year head start, like organic dairy Stonyfield Farms--but it is possible. And, yes, potentially profitable. Featured BP - Big Oil's Biotech Bet, By Matthew Herper [SEE
ARTICLE BELOW] Starbucks - Carbon With That Latte?, By Sonia Narang Washington - S.E.E. Change? S.E.E. Change Go Slow, By
Andrew T. Gillies * In Pictures: A Gallery Of Green Spin Viacom - MTV's Green Crusade, By Parmy Olson * In Pictures: A Peek At MTV's Green Crusade Stonyfield Farms - Milking It, By Tara Weiss Labor - For Job Market, Green Means Growth, By Brian
Wingfield [SEE ARTICLE BELOW] * In Pictures: Green Jobs With Great Growth Potential Wall Street - How Private Equity Plays Green, By Liz
Moyer The Energy Industry - America's Next Nukes, By Brian
Wingfield * In Pictures: Where America's Next Nukes Will Go * Sidebar: The World's Most Nuclear Nations See Also Do You Want To Be A Social Financier? Bain Grows 'Green Team' Concept Will An Oil Mogul See Green? It's Not Easy Being Green Green Greens versus Red Greens Green Powers The Pepsi Generation Video Pre-Fab Goes Green Giants' Ballpark Goes Green Greener Packaging: Home Depot Style Traveling Green: Boeing The Green Behind Green Construction Going Green For Less Green www.forbes.com/2007/07/02/green-environment-energy-biz-cx_db_0703greenbiz_land.html?partner=yahootix |
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July 3 - Special Report: Going Green - For Job Market, Green Means Growth, By Brian Wingfield, Forbes |
In 1999, as the dot-com boom reached new heights, environmental journalist Joel Makower launched an online publication covering business and environmental interests: two areas he believed would become more connected. Smart bet. The tech bubble burst, but Makower's publication, GreenBiz.com, boomed. Providing news and analysis, it's the flagship publication for Greener World Media, a for-profit company he created last year with associate Pete May. "As the greening of business expands, it is filtering into every aspect of business," from procurement to marketing to human resources, says Makower. According to Kevin Doyle, president of Green Economy, a Boston-based firm that promotes an environmentally healthy workforce, the green industry in the United States in 2005 was about $265 billion employing 1.6 million people in an estimated 118,000 jobs. This information was adapted from the Environmental Business Journal, he says, and does not include the organic industry. Green businesses have also been growing at a rate of about 5% annually during the last three years, Doyle says. Two particularly hot areas are global carbon credit trading, which doubled to $28 billion from 2005 to 2006, and construction and services associated with ''green buildings'' that meet industry standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council. Today, the green building industry is worth $12 billion; 10 years ago, it was unquantifiable. The greening of industry is creating a constellation of new careers, and they're not your everyday forestry professions. Many of them are environmental twists on old professions, like law, or in Makower's case, journalism. Others are engineering careers tied to research in renewable technologies like wind energy and ethanol production. For instance: -- Emissions brokers: In a market economy, credits to emit greenhouse gases can be traded on an exchange, and brokers facilitate the deal. If the U.S. ever moves to a mandatory trading system, expect this field to boom. -- Bio-mimicry engineers: This new branch of science uses Mother Nature as a model for solving engineering problems. For example, Atlanta's Sto Corp. created a self-cleaning paint that repels dirt whenever it gets wet, just like the lotus leaf does. -- Sustainability coordinators: Corporations from AstraZeneca (nyse: AZN - news - people ) to Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) are now employing managers to oversee the economic and environmental components of company efforts. -- Green architects: With an increasing focus on energy-efficient buildings, a growing number of architects and developers are getting certified to become specialists in green design. Corporations assume that at some point in the future, governments will put a price on waste, says Doyle. So it's better to invest now in clean technologies than to lose money if new regulations come into play. "People want to get ahead of the game," he says. Conversely, companies see new revenue streams in green technologies and social responsibility. Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ), for example, has invested heavily in the wind industry. Earlier this year, Tyson Foods (nyse: TSN - news - people ) and ConocoPhillips (nyse: COP - news - people ) jointly announced plans to make diesel fuel from chicken fat. And Silicon Valley venture capital firms, like Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are shoveling money into the development of clean technologies. Universities--particularly business schools--also see opportunity. Schools such as Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina and the University of Michigan offer joint M.B.A./environmental science masters degrees. Derrick Bolton, director of admissions at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, says many students are taking positions with corporations that have a commitment to the environment. "They're what I call the 'and' generation," he says. "They don't want to make money or support the environment. They want to do both." ...But what if you're no longer in school? Where do you find a green job? The Web site of Business for Social Responsibility ( bsr.org), a group that helps companies navigate sustainability issues, is a good place to start. GreenBiz.com also contains a job board. Others are ecojobs.com, which includes a broad array of positions from conservation to engineering to international opportunities. Greenjobs.com focuses on the renewable fuel industry. Makower, who survived the dot-com implosion, says the green boom is no bubble. There's a proven market, government backing and corporate buy-in. His take: Expect green business to grow even more over the next decade, and a new generation of green careers to blossom with it. www.forbes.com/2007/07/02/environment-economy-jobs-biz_cx_bw_0703green_greenjobs.html |
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July 3 - Special Report: Going Green - BP's Biotech Bet, By Matthew Herper, Forbes |
PD NOTE: Oil companies using biotech for energy goals. This could be helpful, but we need to watch the downside, self-replicating organisms out in the world with serious "unintended consquences" to world ecosystems. The energy giant has become the biggest investor in some of the most out-there genetics research. Oil companies are better known for burning fossil fuels than splicing genes. But BP, the energy giant formerly known as British Petroleum, has made leading-edge technologies like custom engineered bacteria a linchpin of its strategy to face up to global warming. In the process, germs would be souped up to make ethanol, biobutanol or other fuels from plants like corn. Scientists would embed the genomes of bacteria with genes taken from termites, sheep guts or microbes that live on your lawn. The very plants they consumed would also be bioengineered, and even more re-engineered bacteria might produce gasoline or similar fuels directly. Still more newly discovered microbes that live in oil or natural gas wells might increase the efficiency of existing drilling and mining. Our economy is based on fossil fuels, the remains of long dead organisms. But in the future we might rely on life forms that have never before existed. BP (nyse: BP - news - people ) declined to comment directly on its biotech strategy. "BP is not doing this because they want to fund basic research," says Aristides Patrinos, the former director of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research and now president of biotech startup Synthetic Genomics. "This revolution in biology is ushering in new tools that, by revisiting old tricks, can make energy production a lot more effective." The most prominent bet being made by BP is a plan to spend $500 million over 10 years to fund the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a proposed laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. The neighboring Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign are also involved in the project. The project will look at bioscience approaches from agriculture to economics, and will also study the ethical implications of all this new biotech work. But already, before the institute is built or the contract even signed, the EBI is drawing controversy on the Berkeley campus. One worry is that the new science of synthetic biology, the souped-up form of genetic engineering that involves radically modifying organisms or even someday designing them from scratch, is both more promising and more dangerous that the technology that has been around for two decades and gave birth to Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ), Genencor, and Monsanto (nyse: MON - news - people ). Another concern is that BP will get significant intellectual property rights to the work being done at Berkeley, including the right of first refusal to a flood of IP that could result. But perhaps the biggest red flag is the potential for conflict of interest, as a small number of researchers look to start up what could be a big new research field for academics and industry alike. www.forbes.com/2007/07/03/bp-genomics-energy-biz-sci-cx-mh_0703green_bp.html?partner=yahootix |
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July 3 - Companies Giving Green an Office, By Claudia H. Deutsch, New York Times |
The corporate roster of "chiefs" used to be pretty short: chief executive, chief financial officer and, maybe, chief operating officer. Then came the chief marketing and technology officers. Now, the so-called C-Level Suite is swelling again &emdash; this time, with chief sustainability officers. These are not simply environmental watchdogs, there to keep operations safe and regulators at bay. The new environmental chiefs are helping companies profit from the push to go green. "Environmental vice presidents usually spend company money, but this new breed is helping companies make money," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The upshot, said Geoffrey Heal, a business professor at the Columbia Business School, is that "what started out as a compliance job has evolved into one that guards the value of the brand." The titles vary, mixing and matching "chief" and "vice president," "sustainability" and "environmental," making it impossible to track how many people fill the role. But whatever they are called, the new environmental chiefs &emdash; many of them named in the last two years &emdash; wield extraordinary power. They are exploring partnerships with vendors and customers to create green products &emdash; and they have the power to close the deal. They are also getting a vote &emdash; often, the deciding vote &emdash; on product research and advertising campaigns. ..."Chief sustainability officer sounds all crunchy granola and squishy," he said. "But their rise shows that companies finally realize that sustainability and efficiency go hand in hand." www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/business/03sustain.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin |
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July 3 - In Other Papers: Sweeping China's Pollution Deaths Under the Rug, Posted by Mark Gongloff |
Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke "social unrest," the Financial Times reports. The report, produced in cooperation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities. PD NOTE: There's link more information. |
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June 30 - U.S. family tries living without China, By Cynthia Osterman, Reuters |
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Lamps, birthday candles, mouse traps and flip-flops. Such is the stuff that binds the modern American family to the global economy, author Sara Bongiorni discovers during a year of boycotting anything made in China. In "A Year Without 'Made in China,"' (Wiley, $24.95) Bongiorni tells how she and her family found that such formerly simple acts as finding new shoes, buying a birthday toy and fixing a drawer became ordeals without the Asian giant. Bongiorni takes pains to say she does not have a protectionist agenda and, despite the occasional worry about the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas factories, she has nothing against China. Her goal was simply to make Americans aware of how deeply tied they are to the international trading system. "I wanted our story to be a friendly, nonjudgmental look at the ways ordinary people are connected to the global economy," she said in an interview before the book appears in July. As a business journalist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bongiorni wrote about international trade for a decade. "I used to see the Commerce Department trade statistics, the billions of dollars, and think it had nothing to do with me," she said. The reality was far different. As the year unfolded, "the boycott made me rethink the distance between China and me. In pushing China out of our lives, I got an eye-popping view of how far China had pushed in," she wrote. About 15 percent of the $1.7 trillion in goods the United States imported in 2006 came from China, economist Joel Naroff writes in the foreword. Much of that is the manufactured stuff that fills Wal-Mart and other retailers -- the necessities and frivolities sought by lower- and middle-income Americans. Lower prices have been one benefit of Beijing's rise and make it very hard for consumers to forswear Chinese imports. ...And hard it was. http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/070630/books_madeinchina.html?.v=1&.pf=family-home |
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June 29 - NICARAGUA: Plant Trees, Harvest Water, By José Adán Silva |
MANAGUA, Jun 29 (Tierramérica) - More than six years ago, the residents of the rural community of Lomas del Viento, on Nicaragua's Pacific coast, took up the task of recuperating the 10 flowing springs that were drying up as a result of logging in the surrounding forests. And they succeeded. ...The National Potable Water and Sanitation Commission recognised in an August 2006 document that only a quarter of Nicaraguan families had access to clean water. ...In Latin America there are some 100 million people who live without any sanitation services and 50 million without potable water. Worldwide, there are more than one billion people who lack safe water for drinking, according to the United Nations. |
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June 29 - Feds say seafood farmed in China tainted, AP |
WASHINGTON -- Farmed seafood has joined tires, toothpaste and toy trains on the list of tainted and defective products from China that could be hazardous to a person's health. Federal health officials said Thursday they were detaining three types of Chinese fish -- catfish, basa and dace -- as well as shrimp and eel after repeated testing turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood. The officials said there have been no reports of illnesses nor do the products pose any immediate health risk. They stopped short of ordering a ban on the fresh and frozen seafood. The Food and Drug Administration announcement was the latest in an expanding series of problems with imported Chinese products that seemingly permeate U.S. society. Beyond the fish, federal regulators have recently warned consumers about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China. China, meanwhile, insisted Thursday that the safety of its products was "guaranteed," making a rare direct comment on spreading international fears over tainted and adulterated exports. FDA officials said the level of the drugs in the seafood was low. The FDA isn't asking stores or consumers to toss any of the suspect seafood. www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070629/NEWS/706290388/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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June 29 - BP announces second biofuel venture in a week, By Steve Goldstein, MarketWatch |
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- BP on Friday announced its second biofuel venture in a week, this time inking a deal with a British firm to get fuel out of Jatropha curcas. BP (BP : news, chart, profile ) (UK:BP: news, chart, profile) and D1 Oils (UK:DOO: news, chart, profile) said they plan a 50-50 joint venture to accelerate the planting of Jatropha curcas -- a drought-resistant, inedible oilseed-bearing tree. It does not compete with food crops for good agricultural land or adversely impact the rainforest. BP earlier this week unveiled a $400 million plant with Associated British Foods and DuPont in which wheat will be converted into bioethanol at a plant in Saltend, Hull. See full story. |
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June 29 - Dems' plan on energy tilts green, By Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau |
Pelosi shifts from fossil fuels, emphasizes renewable power House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled new Democratic legislation that marks a tectonic shift in the energy priorities in Congress, revoking $16 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas drilling and creating incentives to produce biofuels and boost energy efficiency. But the San Francisco congresswoman disappointed some environmentalists by announcing that she will wait until this fall to allow debate on a major increase in federal fuel economy standards, which the Senate passed in a landmark vote last week. The Democratic package, which the House will vote on next month, breaks from past congressional energy legislation, which focused heavily on oil, gas, nuclear and coal production. The new legislation is all about conservation and renewable energy. Pelosi, at a press conference in the Capitol on Thursday, said the measure amounted to a new American revolution in energy and climate change. "It provides the largest investment in home-grown biofuels and supports clean, renewable energy," Pelosi said. "It lowers energy costs for the consumers with greater efficiency and smarter technology." The measure could bring new research money to the Bay Area, which has emerged as a major center for biofuels science because of a $500 million deal between oil giant BP and the University of California and a $125 million federal grant to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for biofuels research. Silicon Valley also is pouring money into green energy projects to capitalize on the global shift toward cleaner energy and renewables. The package is likely to be approved by the Democrat-controlled House, but it could face obstacles when it's merged with a Senate energy bill that differs in key ways. The Senate narrowly rejected an effort to revoke billions in tax breaks to the oil industry, which is the centerpiece of the House measure. ..."This Congress will send a strong bipartisan signal that the time for endless delays to stem global warming is passed," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. ...Sponsors of the Senate fuel economy measure, including California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, are urging Pelosi to bypass Dingell and take the issue straight to the House floor. "The momentum is on our side," said Kevin Curtis, the senior advocate of the Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency. "The Senate just pushed it through, it's summer drive time and gas prices are high. It's a basic rule of politics: You strike while you've got the momentum." Momentum also appears to be building for climate change legislation in Congress. Dingell said this week his bill this fall will seek to cut greenhouse gases by 60 to 80 percent by 2050 -- reductions many climate scientists say are needed to avert the most harmful effects of global warming. In the Senate, Virginia Republican John Warner, who is widely respected by both parties, endorsed an economy-wide system to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and pledged to introduce legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman, independent-Conn., before the August break. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, hailed Warner's announcement as a groundbreaking move that could convince other Republicans to support a climate change bill. "It's an important step forward," Boxer said at a hearing Thursday on climate change and electric utilities, pledging to push climate legislation through her committee this fall. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/06/29/MNGV7QO8N71.DTL |
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June 29 - Oil Trade Group Critical of Energy Bill, AP |
Oil Trade Group Criticizes Energy Legislation in Letter to Congress WASHINGTON (AP) -- The oil industry's main trade group is protesting Congressional efforts to pass energy legislation that would mandate huge increases in the use of ethanol in gasoline motor fuel, and raise taxes on oil companies. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070629/oil_trade_group_letter.html?.v=1 |
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June 28 - Energy: The Problem's Not Peak Oil, It's Politics, by Stanley Reed, Business Week |
Go-it-alone governments are choking back output to perilous levels PD NOTE: I think it's valuable to read and consider a variety of perspectives. I think this article makes good points about productivity limitations from political causes. However, I think they miss the larger point, the convincing evidence that peak oil is real and likely imminent. The risk is not just politics. The fact is that global exploration and production efforts have greatly increased recently, but net quantities produced are down, including at key large fields. (See articles in this blog for some examples.) Expert petrogeologists feel that we have reached peak oil extraction rates, while demand increases. It is the geological limit, the thin line between supply and increasing demand, that gives the political games room to be played, the resource wars between those with oil and those who use it, as powerful players seek to control what's left. Activities can include a variety of short-sighted moves, such as those in this article - and our country's war in Iraq, and our continued wasteful use of resources while maintaining our denial of what's really at stake. Some "peak oil" cassandras warn that global energy production will soon fall into permanent decline. But a more immediate danger to world oil supplies may be the tempestuous politics of many producing countries. Witness Venezuela's move to wrest control of key oil projects from global companies on June 26. The move echoes steps taken in other nations that will likely either decrease production or slow its growth in coming years. "The oil is in the ground, but serious doubts are being raised about whether countries have the desire and means to produce it," says Leo Drollas, deputy director of the Center for Global Energy Studies, a London think tank. Right now, Venezuela is creating the biggest doubts. Its output has declined by about 25%, to 2.4 million barrels per day, since populist President Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. The main reason: Chávez fired 75% of the managers at state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) after a strike in 2003. That decision left PDVSA overstretched and ineffective. The plunge would have been disastrous had it not been for increased investment by foreigners. Yet Chávez is making life so difficult for the oil majors that two of them&emdash;Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and ConocoPhillips (COP)&emdash;are now walking away. This latest episode is bound to limit future interest in Venezuela and could well push the country's crude production, which had been recovering, back into decline. Venezuela is far from the only producer country that's giving Big Oil nightmares. On June 22, Russia forced BP (BP) to sell a controlling stake in a massive east Siberian gas field called Kovykta for around $700 million&emdash;a fraction of the project's potential value. Last year, Moscow strong-armed Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS) into giving up control of its big Sakhalin II gas project in the Far East, and it's now battling ExxonMobil over a similar field nearby. The Kremlin's energy policies have already contributed to slowing growth in Russian output: Production is rising at 2% annually, down from double-digit rates a few years ago. And the International Energy Agency says Russia's production may top out at about 10.5 million bbl. daily&emdash;well below the expected peak output of 12 million bbl. per day that some experts had predicted, though still above today's level of 9.9 million bbl. Political rivalries and tumult in other nations are also keeping a lid on supplies. Violence in Iraq means production there remains below prewar levels. Iran's exhausted domestic industry faces declines without outside help, but the country's jousting with Washington gives even non-U.S. investors pause. Mexico faces a fall in output because it is starving Pemex, its national oil company, for capital while barring foreign investors from the sector. "You start getting into some really interesting questions [about where future supplies will come from] if countries don't increase investment," says David Kirsch, an analyst at Washington consultants PFC Energy. Those questions matter for oil producers and users alike. Consumption is growing fast, and without investment in new fields the industry's output would fall by about 3% annually. So every year the world needs new capacity of almost 4 million bbl. per day just to keep up. Western oil companies have the technology and knowhow to help countries with hard-to-tap resources get their crude out of the ground. But with today's high prices, Russia, Venezuela, and others with large reserves don't see the point in ceding profits to the giants. These countries prefer to let national oil companies such as PDVSA, Pemex, and Russia's Gazprom extract the wealth&emdash;even if it they're not quite as efficient as the foreigners. This may make sense for the resource-rich countries. Building up a domestic industry and curbing reliance on outsiders could well serve their national interests. But for oil and gas consumers in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, that means a growing dependence on producers that don't share their interests&emdash;and likely more years of high prices due to limited supplies, regardless of whether or not global output has reached its peak. www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2007/gb20070628_918817.htm?campaign_id=yhoo |
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June 28 - Enterprise Rent-A-Car Establishes E85/FlexFuel Branch in Washington, D.C.; Demonstrates Nationwide Commitment to Alternative Fuels and Technologies |
Enterprise Deploys Largest FlexFuel Fleet in America - 41,000 Vehicles (CSRwire) ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- As part of a partnership to promote the increased availability and use of alternative fuels and technologies throughout the United States, Enterprise Rent-A-Car is designating its premier rental location in Washington, D.C., as an official "E85/FlexFuel branch." ...For Enterprise, the move is the latest addition to a comprehensive and long-term environmental stewardship platform. The company has the world's largest fleet of FlexFuel vehicles - 41,000 cars and trucks that have the ability to burn E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Nationally, Enterprise is actively deploying as many of its FlexFuel vehicles as possible near E85 fueling stations in order to increase the number of cars being fueled with E85. "As the owner of the world's largest vehicle fleet, we are committed to fueling our FlexFuel vehicles with E85 and sending a strong message that we are ready to embrace new technologies and alternative fuels as they become commercially viable," said Matthew G. Darrah, Enterprise Rent-A-Car senior vice president of North American operations. "Those who produce and sell FlexFuel vehicles and E85 fuel need to know that if they make it, we will buy it, and we will encourage our customers to use it as well. ...The other major elements of Enterprise's environmental platform include: -- Nationwide, Enterprise offers more than 3,000 gas/electric hybrid vehicles, a number unmatched in the car rental industry. -- A third of Enterprise's U.S. fleet qualifies for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay certification mark, a distinction the EPA grants to vehicles that emit relatively low levels of both regulated pollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. -- Enterprise has more fuel-efficient cars on the road than any other rental car company in the world, with more than 334,000 vehicles - 47 percent of its rental fleet - averaging a highway fuel efficiency rating of at least 28 mpg. This is nearly 10 times the number of similar vehicles offered by its nearest competitor. In addition, more than 199,000 vehicles - 28 percent of Enterprise's worldwide rental fleet - average at least 32 miles per gallon. -- Enterprise also offers hourly vehicle rentals in several major metropolitan areas, including Washington, D.C., a solution many urban residents are seeking in order to limit vehicle ownership, reduce congestion, and address other environmental concerns resulting from the use of vehicles in densely populated areas. -- Enterprise is actively funding the advancement of alternative fuel research to reduce dependence on fossil fuels for the long term. In February, Enterprise's founding family (the Jack Taylor family of St. Louis) gave $25 million to create the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, one of the world's foremost plant research centers. The Institute will work to develop acceptable and affordable alternatives to finite fossil fuels by finding new ways to create fuel from renewable, reliable plant sources. -- In 2006, Enterprise launched the 50 Million Tree Pledge, a public/private/non-profit partnership involving The National Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service. Through this initiative, the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Foundation will underwrite the planting of 50 million trees - 1 million trees a year over the next 50 years in national forests around the country - or the equivalent of planting a new Central Park every 10 days for the next 50 years. The grant will also fund tree-planting initiatives in international locations where Enterprise does business, including Europe and Canada. In total, it is a gift valued at $50 million if paid for in today's dollars. |
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June 27 - BP Plans a Biofuel Plant, By Benoit Faucon, Wall St. Journal |
BP PLC unveiled a joint venture with Associated British Foods PLC and DuPont Co. to build a $400 million U.K. biofuel plant. The deal moves BP, which is trying to revamp its image as a "green" company, one step closer to industrial production from the research laboratory. With the exception of Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp., most big Western oil companies have yet to announce industrial-scale plans to produce plant-based gasoline. Marathon, in partnership with Ohio-based grain reseller Andersons Inc., is building an ethanol plant in Greenville, Ohio. The facility will have the capacity to produce 110 million gallons, or 418 million liters, of ethanol in a year, and could be operational as soon as the first quarter of 2008. ...Iain Conn, BP's new chief executive for the refining and marketing business, said the "impact on food prices is unlikely to be material." But he added BP's "goal is to migrate to second-generation biofuels," which are based on nonedible vegetal elements. BP said the plant will initially produce bioethanol, but the partners will look at the feasibility of converting it to biobutanolonce the technology is available. BP and DuPont intend to build a jointly funded biobutanol demonstration plant that will run parallel to the main plant to support this objective, which will start operations in early 2009. Biobutanol is similar to ethanol, which is regularly blended with gasoline, but is viewed as having several advantages, such as being transportable on gasoline pipelines. Biobutanol can typically be made of leaves and stalks, rather than just cereal kernels, essentially doubling the fuel produced per acre of cereal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118296859105850429.html?mod=googlenews_wsj |
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June 25 - Booms Were Made to Go Bust, By Robert Kiyosaki/Why the Rich Get Richer |
During the height of the real estate bubble, I wrote a column saying that the crash was coming and suggested selling any piece of real estate that was overpriced, questionable, or non-performing. As expected, I received angry replies. Today, I'm predicting the next crash, what I believe will cause it, and why it'll be a severe blow to the global economy. The signs are already here. Busts Beat Booms First of all, it's no big deal to predict booms and busts. All markets boom and bust. It's just easier to predict a bust because the signs are so obvious -- like excess euphoria, easy access to money, huge profits, and scores of happy amateurs entering the market. Booms are harder to predict. They start silently, like oak acorns buried in the ground -- you don't notice them until they're towering trees. For example, few people recognized Microsoft or Google for the giants they were until after they'd become major players and the big profits had been made. Paradoxically, that means busts are better because we can see them coming. This gives us time to prepare, and makes it easier to capitalize on them. ...But the global boom is clearly built on a mountain of debt. ...While it's tough to predict the future, one thing is for certain: The U.S. dollar will continue to go down in value, and savers will be losers. With people all over the world piling debt upon debt and spending like fools, it might be best to follow the Chinese. They've never trusted banks, but have always trusted gold. Maybe it's time we started doing the same. |
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June 21 - ExxonMobil Chairman Highlights Commitment to Meeting Growing Energy Demand and Addressing Climate Risks, Exxon Mobil Corporation Press Release |
Speaking today at Chatham House, London, Rex W. Tillerson, Chairman and Chief Executive of Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM - News), discussed two critical energy challenges which the world currently faces: meeting the economic needs of growing populations, especially in developing countries, and addressing the risks of climate change. ...He described the actions ExxonMobil is taking in partnership with others to address both challenges, and also discussed a framework for economic and climate change policymaking. "It has become increasingly clear that climate change poses risks to society and ecosystems that are serious enough to warrant action - by individuals, by businesses and governments." Reaffirming ExxonMobil's commitment to being a constructive and active participant in dialogues concerning proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Tillerson outlined the company's views on important elements for policymaking. "We believe that maximizing the use of markets to select and deploy technologies will best serve society's interests in the long term and meet future energy needs. Achieving a uniform and predictable cost for carbon across the economy will enable market mechanisms to work effectively to this end." PD NOTE: Fascinating to watch this moment, when even Exxon realizes which way the wind is blowing, and shifts from obstructing to joining the parade - with it's own agenda of course. |
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June 21 - Reserves Not Replaced at 100 Percent, By John Porretto, AP Business Writer |
Oil Majors Replace Less Than 100 Percent of Reserves, Report Says PD NOTE: This data seems consistent with the peak oil thesis, that the peak is happening now, even as companies spend more more to try to find more. HOUSTON -- The world's major oil companies replaced reserves at levels below 100 percent for the third straight year in 2006, while costs to find and produce the key asset continued to rise, a new analysis shows. Reserve replacements last year, excluding acquisitions and divestitures, were 91 percent, slightly below the 92 percent replaced in 2005, according to a report released Thursday by investment bank Bear Stearns & Co. At the same time, the companies' search and development costs rose to $13.63 per barrel of oil equivalent, up 28 percent from 2005, the report said. Reserve replacements represent the ratio of reserves found over production for a given period. Analysts typically say a company's reserves replacement should average more than 100 percent over a three- to five-year period to indicate growth. ...Jeff Tillery, an analyst with Pickering Energy Partners in Houston, said declining reserves could have some effect on rising gasoline prices, particularly as worldwide demand grows. But he noted companies such as Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and others majors produce a small portion of the world's oil and gas compared with government-controlled national oil companies. ...The report said finding and development costs continue to be influenced by the need to extract oil from more technically challenging areas, such as deeper waters and rugged terrain. PD NOTE: This is also predicted by peak oil, that our need will drive us to more challenging spots. The article says that some companies had increased reserves, but only by buying out other companies, which is not really a net increase! http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070621/oil_reserve_replacements.html?.v=1 |
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June 20 - Trouble brews as biofuel boom jacks up price of beer, by Kirsten Grieshaber, Associated Press |
AYING, GERMANY - Like most Germans, brewer Helmut Erdmann is all for the fight against global warming. Unless, that is, it drives up the price of his beer. And that is exactly what is happening to Erdmann and other German brewers as farmers abandon barley -- the raw material for the national beverage -- to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally friendly biofuels. "Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany -- people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk," said Erdmann, director of the family-owned Ayinger brewery in Aying, an idyllic village nestled between Bavaria's rolling hills and dark forests with the towering Alps on the far horizon. "With the current spike in barley prices, we won't be able to avoid a price increase of our beer any longer," Erdmann said, stopping to sample his freshly brewed, golden product right from the steel fermentation kettle. In the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to $271 per ton as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil. As a result, the price for the key ingredient in beer -- barley malt, or barley that has been allowed to germinate -- has soared by more than 40 percent, to about 385 euros or $522 per ton, from about 270 euros a ton two years ago, according to the Bavarian Brewers' Association. For Germany's beer drinkers that is scary news: Their beloved beverage -- often dubbed 'liquid bread' because it is a basic ingredient of many Germans' daily diet -- is getting more expensive. While some breweries have already raised prices, many others will follow later this year, brewers say. Talk about higher beer prices has not gone unnoticed by consumers. Sitting at a long wooden table under leafy chestnut trees at the Prater, one of Berlin's biggest beer gardens, Volker Glutsch, 37, complained bitterly. This article is also at: www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070530/germany-beer-to-biofuel.htm |
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June 20 - Google's future is green, David Lazarus |
Google might be a privacy watchdog's worst nightmare, but give the Mountain View company this much credit: It puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to protecting the environment. Google announced this week that it will give $1 million in grants to promote use of plug-in hybrids -- vehicles that run primarily on electricity but also use gas, and which can get as much as 100 miles per gallon. The company also said it's dedicating an additional $10 million to developing this technology and, on Monday, activated the largest solar-power installation on a U.S. corporate campus, capable of generating enough juice to meet about a third of the power needed for Google's headquarters. The grants and investments are being made through the company's philanthropic arm, Google.org. Dan Reicher, director of Google.org's climate and energy initiatives, told me Tuesday that the company sees plug-in hybrids as a partial solution to a variety of concerns, from global warming to reliance on overseas oil. ...Brad Whitcomb, PG&E's vice president of customer products and services, said in a statement that the utility's collaboration with Google shows "how the high-tech, transportation and energy sectors are intersecting to meet our country's growing energy needs and protect the environment." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/20/LAZ.TMP&nl=top |
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June 18 - Digital Rules: Green Greens versus Red Greens, By Rich Karlgaard, Forbes |
...It's hard to find a major CEO today who isn't talking Green. This is both smart public relations and political insurance. It's simply folly to claim membership in that shrinking group of CEOs who admit to being skeptical about human-caused global warming. To do so paints a bull's-eye on one's shirt and exposes one's shareholders to foolish risk. Nobody argues the p.r. and political virtues of going Green. But what if, deep down, you genuinely think the whole bit about human-caused global warming is … overblown? Or, even if you believe in human-caused GW, what if you think the catastrophic effects predicted by Al Gore and friends are … silly? You zip your lip and go Green anyway. Purely because it's the smart, economical thing to do. ...What I propose is that the whole Green debate needs to be recast. It's not about Greens versus Grumps. Nor is it about those who think Earth is careening toward disaster versus those who welcome vineyards in Saskatchewan. The real battle pits Green Greens against Red Greens. This is one fight no reader of FORBES wants to lose. ...Did you buy a Toyota Prius to save on fuel costs or to make a statement? Does it matter? Either way, you believe Green is Green--a freely made transaction built on your desire for value. Let's take this a step further. Do you think air travelers should be limited to buying a single short-haul flight per year without penalty? Believe it or not, that's what the U.K.'s Conservative Party is advocating. This line of thinking is very much different, and bad. It says that Red is Green--that the only way to rescue Earth is through government intervention that severely restricts human freedom. PD NOTE: This is a fascinating new line, voluntary versus mandatory approaches, and linking it with Red, that old framing that stopped much of this culture's conversation about community vs. individual interests and responsibilities. We need to prepare ourselves for this debate, as I expect we'll hear more of it, because corporations generally prefer non-mandatory approaches. I find those generally preferable, but not always. Unfortunately, they often don't create the level of results we need to change the direction of our shared ocean liner quickly enough to avoid a series of impending disasters. www..forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0618/027.html?partner=yahoomag |
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June 19 - New age town in U.S. embraces dollar alternative, By Scott Malone, Reuters |
GREAT BARRINGTON, Massachusetts - A walk down Main Street in this New England town calls to mind the pictures of Norman Rockwell, who lived nearby and chronicled small-town American life in the mid-20th Century. So it is fitting that the artist's face adorns the 50 BerkShares note, one of five denominations in a currency adopted by towns in western Massachusetts to support locally owned businesses over national chains. "I just love the feel of using a local currency," said Trice Atchison, 43, a teacher who used BerkShares to buy a snack at a cafe in Great Barrington, a town of about 7,400 people. "It keeps the profit within the community." There are about 844,000 BerkShares in circulation, worth $759,600 at the fixed exchange rate of 1 BerkShare to 90 U.S. cents, according to program organizers. The paper scrip is available in denominations of one, five, 10, 20 and 50. In their 10 months of circulation, they've become a regular feature of the local economy. Businesses that accept BerkShares treat them interchangeably with dollars: a $1 cup of coffee sells for 1 BerkShare, a 10 percent discount for people paying in BerkShares. Named for the local Berkshire Hills, BerkShares are accepted in about 280 cafes, coffee shops, grocery stores and other businesses in Great Barrington and neighboring towns, including Stockbridge, the town where Rockwell lived for a quarter century. ...Great Barrington attracts weekend residents and tourists from the New York area who help to support its wealth of organic farms, yoga studios, cafes and businesses like Allow Yourself to Be, which offers services ranging from massage to "chakra balancing" and Infinite Quest, which sells "past life regression therapy." ..The BerkShares program is one of about a dozen such efforts in the nation. Local groups in California, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin run similar ones. One of the oldest is Ithaca Hours, which went into circulation in 1991 in Ithaca, New York. ..."The promise of this program is for it to be a completed circle," said Matt Rubiner, owner of Rubiner's cheese shop and Rubi's cafe. Some local farmers who supply him accept BerkShares, but he pays most of his bills in dollars. "The circle isn't quite completed yet in most cases, and someone has to take the hit," Rubiner said, referring to the 10 percent discount. "The person who takes the hit is the merchant, it's me." Meanwhile, Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc., a western Massachusetts bank that exchanges BerkShares for dollars, is considering BerkShares-denominated checks and debit cards. "Businesses aren't comfortable walking around with wads of BerkShares to pay for their supplies or their advertising," said Melissa Joyce, a branch officer with the bank, which has 25 branches, six of which exchange BerkShares. "I do hope that we're able to develop the checking account and debit card, because it will make it easier for everyone." |
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June 19 - California Academy of Sciences aspires to set green standard, By Terence Chea, AP |
SAN FRANCISCO&emdash;Built with recycled materials, powered by sunlight and covered with a "living roof" of native plants, the new home of the California Academy of Sciences is being billed as the world's greenest museum. When it opens to the public in Golden Gate Park next year, academy officials hope the newly built science education center will become a model for sustainable building for the next generation of museums. "We wanted our building to really reflect our institutional commitment to the environment and its sustainability," said Frank Almeda, senior curator of the academy's botany department. Founded in 1853 as the first scientific institution in the American West, the privately funded academy is home to eight research departments, as well as an aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum that draw students and tourists from around the world. The new 410,000-square foot museum is being built on the site of the academy's 13 original buildings. The institute has been temporarily housed in a building near downtown San Francisco since 2004. Construction of the new building is expected to be completed in October. The museum is scheduled to open a year later after the exhibits&emdash;including rainforest and corral reef systems&emdash;are installed and resident animals are moved into their new homes. Designed by prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano, the new structure was constructed to blend into its setting in Golden Gate Park and embody the academy's mission to "explore, explain and protect the natural world." When completed, it's expected to be the first museum to earn the U.S. Green Building Council's "platinum" certification&emdash;the highest rating for environmentally sustainable construction, academy officials said. ...The academy's new home will be a "great educational tool," Almeda said. "Not only will we have great exhibits inside the building, but the building will be an exhibit unto itself." |
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June 15 - Hertz, Avis Plan to Boost Hybrid Fleets, By Bree Fowler, AP Business Writer |
Rental Car Companies Hertz, Avis Plan to Boost Hybrid Fleets to Meet Demand in 'Green' Rides NEW YORK -- The increased demand for "green" vehicles is spilling over to the rental car counter, where many more drivers will soon be able to choose a hybrid vehicle. Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said Thursday it will spend $68 million to add 3,400 Toyota Prius hybrids to its fleets by 2008. And Avis Budget Group Inc. said this week it plans to make 1,000 hybrid Prius vehicles available for rent as early as next week. Brian Chee, an automotive analyst for Autobytel.com's soon to be launched Web site MyRide.com, said that even with the fleet expansions, hybrid vehicles still represent a small part of rental car fleets. "This is a first step," Chee said. "It'll be interesting to see if the rental car companies continue this. Like other companies, they're making a 'green' statement, and this is a good way to do it." By replacing 1,000 of its ordinary rental cars with the gas-electric Prius models, Hertz said it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 3,000 tons per year. "Today's announcement highlights the next step in what is already a multiyear effort by Hertz to promote environmental sustainability throughout the company," Mark Frissora, the company's chairman and chief executive, said at Thursday's announcement. ...Barrows said Avis also believes that the Prius rentals will not only appeal to travelers, but those interested in buying a hybrid. ...Enterprise Rent-A-Car also operates a fleet of more than 3,000 hybrid vehicles, in addition to 41,000 flex-fuel cars and light trucks that can run on ethanol-based fuel, the company said. |
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June 8 - Goodbye, Gasoline, By Derek J. Mooer, Press Democrat |
Growing number of North Coast drivers fill up on biodiesel fuel Placing a fuel nozzle into her 1981 Mercedes sedan, Michelle Orme did something you don't often see in this age of rising gas prices and road rage. She jumped in the air and giggled. The Graton woman was filling her car for the first time Thursday with biodiesel fuel, which is made with plant oils or animal fat and is touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to regular petroleum. The pump Orme used at a Chevron station on Highway 12 in Sebastopol was put in three weeks ago. At least four other gas stations in Sonoma County have installed similar pumps in the past month, bringing to 11 the total number of stations in the area providing the fuel. With increased availability has come an increased need to understand what biodiesel is and how it works, as not all fuels are created equal and not every car is optimized to use them -- as some vehicle owners have learned the hard way after spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to fix engine problems. Fuel cost is another factor. At the Chevron station, Orme paid $3.49 a gallon Thursday for "B99," which is 99 percent biodiesel and 1 percent petroleum. That represented 44 cents more per gallon than the price for regular diesel, and the same price as regular unleaded gas. "It's not about money," Orme, 36, said. "It's about trying to take a step in the right direction toward more awareness of how we use resources, and how we interact with the hand that feeds us." PD NOTE: More about local use and the range of experiences people have. www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070608/NEWS/706080336/1033/NEWS01 |
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June 6 - Oil Prices Rev Ethanol Demand, Put Agribusiness Into Overdrive, By Vance Cariaga, Investor's Business Daily |
When the high price of crude oil turns out to be a boon to farmers and fertilizer salesmen, you can say with a certain confidence that these are different times we live in. That's what's happening as demand for corn, a key ingredient in the production of ethanol, continues to push up shares of leading agricultural and fertilizer stocks. ...U.S. farmers plan to plant 90.5 million acres of corn this year, according to Department of Agriculture reports. That's a 15% increase from last year. Similar expansions are planned in other countries. "With higher corn prices we've seen rapid expansion in South America," said Jerry Norton, grains analyst at the USDA. "We expect them to have record crops this year and next year." ..."Demand for corn is increasing because the consumption of ethanol is ramping up," said Greenwich Consultants analyst Michael Judd. "We're also seeing high demand for corn exports because global supplies are low." ...In terms of volume and acreage, corn is the "dominant crop" in the U.S., Norton said. That means it's also a key market for suppliers of herbicides, fertilizer and other agricultural products. Sales of corn seed and traits -- which are used to improve tolerance to herbicides, among other things -- accounted for more than 45% of Monsanto's sales during the fiscal second quarter, which ended Feb. 28. Quarterly sales in the category rose 47% year over year, compared to 19% growth in overall sales. The category's gross profit also gained 47%. ...The USDA's Norton doesn't see the ethanol market softening anytime soon. "The high crude and gas prices support ethanol prices, so there are high levels of return," he said. "Demand for ethanol is going to keep the supply/demand balance for corn very tight over the next few years. You also have all these ethanol plants coming on line, which means production will only increase." |
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June 6 - Environment: Bain Grows 'Green Team' Concept, Tara Weiss, Forbes |
When most recent grads start their first job they're concerned with things like figuring out which printer their computer sends files to, or learning the names of everyone in the office. Blythe Adler and Bryan Birsic had loftier aspirations. Just four months after starting as associate consultants at Bain Consulting's New York office in 2005, they spearheaded a project that has changed the way the office operates and has the potential to do the same in its other North American offices. Their project, the creation of a Green Team, examined every facet of the office--from the usage of paper cups to energy consumption--and came up with a plan to function more sustainably. Ultimately, Adler and Birsic-- who got the initial idea from Adler's sister, who works in Bain's London office--turned lunchroom banter into a firm-wide objective that has raised their colleagues' awareness about what it means to be environmentally friendly. Bain's associate consulting program attracts the best and brightest from the nation's top schools, so it's not entirely surprising that members managed to accomplish their regular assignments and more. The firm actively cultivates an entrepreneurial spirit in its young employees. Other associate-started initiatives include a mentoring program for youths started by L.A. associates and a formal employee-coaching program started by New York associates. But it's safe to say their program has a different type of impact. "They have absolutely changed the way Bain New York does business," says Bill Neuenfeldt, the New York-based Bain partner who helped Adler and Birsic get the Green Team off the ground. While many companies are forming green initiatives, most of their leaders aren't just out of college, and most of the programs are on a smaller, more immediate scale. Adler and Birsic, who both say they are environmentally conscious but were never outspoken advocates, planned for the future. "They thought about both dimensions--the direct impact we can have on the environment and the awareness part of it," says Neuenfeldt. "They were already thinking like owners about a way to get results. It wasn't just a paper cup reduction but a vision far beyond cost savings and environmental impact. It was really about creating and promoting broader awareness. By the end of our conversation they were thinking, 'If it goes well, why not implement it at other offices?' " Still, this is a finance company, so success is measured in part by the bottom line. They estimate that the paper cup reduction alone will save about $40,000 over a five-year period. Reducing printer paper and ink cartridge usage together produces a savings of an additional $40,000 over a five-year period. ..."They're changing how we purchase and how we think about purchasing," says Adler, a 2005 Harvard graduate. "We're starting to look at what each office does, and many seem very interested in how they can implement some of the programs we started here." That's a nice success. But they've achieved what they consider a bigger goal. "We're not Dow Chemical, we're not going to have a huge impact," says Birsic, 24, a 2005 graduate of Williams College. "We're a service company, so the awareness piece is key. If we can instill on this company the importance of environmental activism, that has a greater impact than the number of paper cups saved." It's safe to say they've achieved that. Their co-workers come to them with all sorts of questions. "People ask us if it's better to leave their air conditioning on at home on low or shut it off," says Adler. To answer questions like that they're compiling a top 10 list of ways to be green. Now they're fielding calls from offices across the country asking for a blueprint of what they've done. Says Birsic, "It's become more than we envisioned." www.forbes.com/leadership/2007/06/06/environment-ban-green-lead-citizen-cx_tw_0606green.html |
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June 4 - Study: Products put at risk by relentless cost-cutting, By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com senior writer |
Exploding laptop batteries, melamine-tainted pet food, toothpaste laced with anti-freeze. All three products were recently imported into the United States and all three illustrate how companies have grown more vulnerable to global glitches in product safety and even potential terrorist risks, according to a new report from Deloitte Consulting. The Deloitte study, entitled "Supply chain's last straw: A vicious cycle of risk," studied 25 leading global companies from various industries with combined revenues of more than $1.5 trillion. It found that not one of them was fully prepared to handle or prevent these risks. What's more, the report concluded that as companies cut costs to become more efficient - and more competitive globally - the more vulnerable they tend to become to lapses in the supply chain. "The search for cheaper labor, cheaper raw materials, and cheaper transportation - the quest for efficiency - has forced the focus of companies to switch from revenue growth to cost reduction," Deloitte said in the study. "Individually, these forces have changed the world in which we live and conduct business. But when combined, these forces can create a perfect storm of risk not seen before in the history of commerce or humankind," it added. ..."Recognize that efficiency leads to vulnerability. As companies move to lower costs across the supply chain, at some point it'll become difficult to buy quality products. History has shown that when you squeeze the supplier, they will skimp," he said. "Look up any key junctures in the supply chain and monitor it mercilessly," Landis said. "Your brand is at risk if you don't." PD NOTE: We all need to realize the risks to ourselves when we buy the cheapest or want the investment with the most profit, ignoring all other criteria or impacts. It's reasonable to be wise in spending our money, but we need to not lose sight of the bigger picture, what we really want for our lives, our health, our communities, and our planet - and to help ensure that we don't inadvertently sacrifice what we really want in our drive to save a buck. http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/070604/060407_supplychain_risk.html?.v=1&.pf=insurance |
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June 1 - Will Warming Curb the Appeal of Your Home?, by Stephanie I. Cohen, MarketWatch |
Environmental assessments alert owners to dangers of climate change Are the effects of climate change -- coastal erosion, rising sea levels and increased hurricanes -- coming to a neighborhood near you and what could it mean for the value of your property? Climate Appraisal Services, a new online service for home buyers and homeowners, claims it can tell whether a home will be submerged from climate change in the next century by using a property's address. Entering the location of a home in the continental U.S. at the company's Web site, www.climateappraisal.com, pulls up an environmental lowdown: information on the coastal erosion, tornadoes, earthquakes, drought, floods, landslides and volcanoes in the area. http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/103077/Will-Warming-Curb-the-Appeal-of-Your-Home? |
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June 1 - Eco-Friendly Ways to Cut Energy Costs, By David Bach The Automatic Millionaire |
Warmer weather is finally here, and so is your chance to take a much-needed vacation and reconnect with those you love. Unfortunately, high temperatures also mean high energy bills, and the Energy Information Administration predicts a 2.6 percent increase in electricity costs this summer. Overall, the average household spends over $1,600 on fuel and electricity throughout the year. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, more than 50 percent of that is spent on cooling and heating our homes. And on top of that, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that we spend as much as $500 per year on water and sewer bills. Seven Money- and Energy-Saving Tips Fortunately, with a few changes you can slash your water and utility bills in half. Here's my checklist for saving a bundle this summer, while also making your home more environmentally friendly and energy efficient: |
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May 29 - Ex-China drug regulator to be executed, By Audra Ang, Associated Press Writer |
BEIJING - China's former top drug regulator was sentenced to death Tuesday in an unusually harsh punishment for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths. Seeking to address broadening concerns over food, the government also announced plans for its first recall system for unsafe products. The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods &emdash; from pet food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with induso trial chemicals to tainted antibiotics. Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court convicted Zheng Xiaoyu of taking bribes in cash and gifts worth more than $832,000 while he was director of the State Food and Drug Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Those bribes allowed eight companies to get around drug approval standards, it said. ...Food safety problem is a serious problem across the vast country, with China's Health Ministry reporting almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005. Spoiled food accounting for the largest number, followed by poisonous plants or animals and use of agricultural chemicals. According to the official magazine Outlook Weekly, a survey by the quality inspection administration found that a third of China's 450,000 food makers had no licenses. Also, 60 percent of the total did not conduct safety tests or have the capability to do so, the survey found. |
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May 27 - Companies Working to Pare Down Waste, By Rick Callahan, Associated Press Writer |
Wal-Mart Stores , Other Companies Working to Pare Down Product Packaging and Waste With earthshaking thuds, a plastic-stamping machine hammers a sheet of hot plastic into king-size drinking cups destined to quench travelers' thirst for soda at the nation's convenience stores. The blank white cups aren't just flexible and resistant to splitting -- they're also made from less plastic than Berry Plastics Corp.'s competitors through a manufacturing process the company guards so closely it forbids photographs of those machines. As retailers like Wal-Mart push for greener packaging, Berry Plastics is handling a growing number of redesign projects for customers eager to make their products less bulky to help both their bottom lines and the environment. "It's not a fad anymore -- it's really turning into a trend," said Curt Begle, the Evansville company's vice president of container sales. |
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May 25 - Do You Have That in Green?, by Angela Moore, MarketWatch |
Even big-box Wal-Mart and Home Depot are embracing ecology At Home Depot Inc.'s headquarters in Atlanta, associates' empty soda bottles are collected and filled with a worm-excrement mixture and sold as plant food. This twist on recycling and sustainability, part of a partnership with vendor Terra Cycle, is just one small component of the No. 2 U.S. retailer's "eco options" program, which puts more than 2,500 products that it considers environmentally friendly on store shelves. In addition to worm-generated garden nutrients, the Earth-friendliest items at Home Depot include natural insect repellent, energy-efficient washing machines, cellulose insulation and biodegradable planting pots. The environment is a growing concern for retailers across the country as they feel pressure to cut energy use, curb carbon emissions and slash waste, while in the process encouraging suppliers to develop eco-friendly products and practices and helping, or in some cases persuading, consumers to shop -- and live -- green. Initiatives range from reducing packaging and halting nonessential mailings to adopting more efficient store design and nontoxic building materials. "I think the overall awareness of global warming is at the highest level it's ever been," said Ron Jarvis, Home Depot's vice president of merchandising (as well as the chain's vice president of environmental innovation), in a MarketWatch interview. "Suppliers are excited; they see us as a launching pad for new products they want to bring to market. We have a lot of well-recognized companies working on 'eco options' products for us that we'll be rolling out in the future." And Home Depot is not alone. A handful of large retailers are taking up positions near the vanguard of the environmental movement, both in how they operate their stores and in the environmentally benign products they sell. The reasons are as varied as the products -- from political and economic to social and strategic. ...Consumers have demonstrated they like to buy from retailers that make them feel good..."Going green is something that helps consumers differentiate between retailers. If it's not about price, it's got to be about something," National Retail Federation spokeswoman Ellen Davis said. ...If the retail industry's environmental push starts costing shoppers money, consumers might push back and reject the premium pricing, no matter how good the cause. http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/103062/How-green-are-your-favorite-retailers? |
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May 23 - GE Unveils First Hybrid Road Locomotive, General Electric Company |
Demonstration Unit will Debut at GE's Ecomagination Event in California GE today announced the debut of its one-of-a-kind hybrid road locomotive at its Ecomagination event in Los Angeles. GE's Evolution® Hybrid locomotive will be unveiled tomorrow, May 24, at LA's historic Union Station to demonstrate the progress that GE's Transportation business is making in developing a freight hybrid locomotive that is capable of recycling thermal energy as stored power in on-board batteries. This demonstration hybrid unit will be one of many technologies featured at the Ecomagination event that are developed and used in the rail industry to reduce smog-causing emissions, including Nitrous Oxide emissions, and particulate matter. Ecomagination is GE's initiative to bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet their most pressing environmental challenges. |
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May 21 - Emerging Markets Report: Middle East is linchpin for commodities chemicals, By Laura Mandaro, MarketWatch |
Rising oil and gas prices are raising the stakes for global chemical companies seeking access to cheap Middle Eeastern resources -- or, for those that already have these supplies, sharpening their advantage. On Monday, the mostly state-owned Saudi petrochemicals company Sabic said it would buy General Electric Co.'s specialty plastics division for $11.6 billion in cash and debt assumption, more than many on Wall Street expected the money-losing division to fetch. The division had been a black mark on GE's books, posting a 22% drop in profit last year on a meager 1% rise in sales, to $6.6 billion. A jump in the price of benzene, a derivative of crude oil, was the culprit. ...But Sabic, headquartered in Riyadh and 70% owned by the government of the world's largest oil exporter, is likely to get a deal on the price of this crude-oil byproduct. Sabic "can get much cheaper raw materials," said HSBC Securities chemicals analyst Hassan Ahmed. That cost advantage could give the division's new owner an edge over its competitors, said Ahmed, when it comes to making polycarbonate. ...With energy costs in mind, the world's largest chemicals companies have been rushing to expand in the Middle East. Meanwhile, a push by governments like Saudi Arabia's to diversify their economies away from petroleum has made them more receptive to these overtures. ...That's a trickier feat for the smaller companies. PD NOTE: An interesting side effect of peak oil and expected increase in oil prices - a shift of chemicals production to those who have the oil, because they can get a better deal on the raw materials. Perhaps this will even encourage a shift to less-toxic non-petroleum substitutes? One can hope. |
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May 21 - High Gas Prices: Look No Further Than The Person In The Mirror, SeekingAlpha |
Todd Sullivan submits: Everyday gas prices hit a new high record level. The folks people love to blame are the oil companies [Exxon (NYSE: XOM - News) is the main whipping boy], the Iraq war, a Bush / Cheney conspiracy or the local gas station. As a matter of fact, they blame everyone except the real culprit, themselves. Year to date gasoline demand is at a record 9.2 million barrels a day. Much had been said in the news about refinery outages and there have been a few but they have been able to keep up increasing production 3.1%, which is ahead of the 2% increased in demand. ....This means that despite you and I demanding more gasoline than ever, refiners are doing their part keeping up production. This demand and inventory depletion has lead to prices at the pump surging 43% this year past post Katrina levels to $3.13 a gallon nationally on Friday, and seem to be heading past the inflation adjusted all time high of $3.22 set in March of 1981. |
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May 20 - Car sales stall, By Kevin McCallum, Press Democrat |
Auto dealers hope more fuel-efficient models can turn around 11.7% drop countywide Soaring gas prices and a slumping real estate market are conspiring to put the brakes on new car sales in Sonoma County, squeezing an industry that is a major employer and the largest source of sales tax revenue for local governments. Sales of new cars in Sonoma County tumbled 11.7 percent in the first quarter of 2007 compared with a year ago, worse than the 7 percent statewide drop, according to a report issued last week by AutoCount, which tracks new vehicle purchases. Local car dealers say they are hopeful sales will pick up this year as manufacturers roll out new vehicles that are better designed and more fuel efficient, drawing reluctant buyers back to showrooms. But the sales data suggest 2007 may continue to be sluggish, particularly for domestic dealers with large stocks of SUVs and pickups that get poor gas mileage. ..."The first quarter was down a little more sharply than we predicted," said Jeffrey Foltz, president of Auto Outlook, which produces the report for the California Motor Car Dealers Association. "Gas prices went higher than we thought, and people can't get money out of their houses anymore." Economists have long warned that a sharp, prolonged downturn in home prices in the county could have a ripple effect on other sectors of the economy, as homeowners think twice before further tapping their shrinking home equity. The problem is compounded for the car industry because so many people purchased new cars and trucks when the housing market was strong and incentives such as zero percent financing were commonplace. ... The Hansel Auto Group, the largest car dealer in Sonoma County with eight dealerships, saw revenues decline by about 5 percent last year to $391 million. The shortfall forced the company to reduce inventory, shed about 30 jobs and reduce costs such as advertising, said Henry Hansel, co-owner. ...Many imports are doing very well, with fuel efficiency leader Toyota's sales rising 11 percent in the county. ...One local Ford dealership, Sebastopol's Carter Ford, went out of business at the end of April. "Ford is struggling, there is no question," Henry Hansel said. "Part of that is because they've had so much emphasis on pickups and full-size SUVs." Ford posted the biggest loss in its 103-year history in 2006, a staggering $12.7 billion. It also has had a string of embarrassing recalls. The other two Big Three automakers are facing their own challenges. In April, Toyota surpassed General Motors as the world's largest automaker. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070520/NEWS/705200370/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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May 18 - Greenpeace:Exxon still funding climate skeptics, By Michael Erman, Reuters |
Exxon Mobil Corp. gave over $2 million in 2006 to groups Greenpeace called global warming skeptics even as the oil company campaigned to improve its climate-unfriendly image. Nevertheless, Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded company, cut its donations to these groups by more than 40 percent from 2005. The company still funds about 40 "skeptic groups," according to the report from Greenpeace, but Exxon disputed that many of the organizations were "global warming deniers." ...Earlier this year, Exxon said it had stopped funding a handful of groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that have downplayed the risks of carbon dioxide emissions. |
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May 18 - Fill your car up with aluminum?, By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters |
Pellets made out of aluminum and gallium can produce pure hydrogen when water is poured on them, offering a possible alternative to gasoline-powered engines, U.S. scientists say. Hydrogen is seen as the ultimate in clean fuels, especially for powering cars, because it emits only water when burned. U.S. President George W. Bush has proclaimed hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, but researchers have not decided what is the most efficient way to produce and store hydrogen. In the experiment conducted at Purdue University in Indiana, "The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," said Jerry Woodall, an engineering professor at Purdue who invented the system. Woodall said in a statement the hydrogen would not have to be stored or transported, taking care of two stumbling blocks to generating hydrogen. ..."It is one of the more feasible ideas out there," Jay Gore, an engineering professor and interim director of the Energy Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "It's a very simple idea but had not been done before." ..."No toxic fumes are produced," Woodall said. Based on current energy and raw materials prices, the cost of making the hydrogen fuel is about $3 a gallon, about the same as the average price for a gallon of gas in the United States. Recycling the aluminum oxide byproduct and developing a lower grade of gallium could bring down costs, making the system more affordable, Woodall said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070518/sc_nm/fuel_hydrogen_dc_2;_ylt=Agz7U8RI.RnmlI9XI6cYw10E1vAI Update: This page seems to have expired. However, this is a Reuters news service story, so if you Google a key phrase (such as "Pellets made out of aluminum") you'll get lots of different sites with the full article. |
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May 16 - Artists and Inventors Invited to Exhibit at the Green Man |
Environmental Solutions to be On Display at Burning Man 2007 Artists and Inventors Invited to Showcase Emerging Technologies This summer, Burning Man will hold its twenty-second annual event in the vast and remote Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Forty thousand participants from around the world, including more than 100 journalists, will attend this celebration of creativity. The year's theme, "The Green Man", explores the human relationship to nature, in particular our collective response to global warming, and sets the stage for an unprecedented informational exchange. In recognition of this unique opportunity, Burning Man is inviting artists, manufacturers, developers, scientists, and inventors, to showcase their emerging environmental technologies at this year's eight day event, Aug. 27th -Sept 3rd. At the center of Black Rock City, home to Burning Man, will be the Green Man Pavilion, 30,000 square feet of shaded exhibition space for the display of interactive artistic, scientific and educational models, a "World's Fair" of cutting edge technologies. Director of Burning Man, Larry Harvey said "Our goal is to create a space where breakthrough ideas and proven technologies addressing environmental issues such as energy production, solid waste management, and remediation of toxic substances, can be displayed and interacted with, against the backdrop of the world's largest participant-created event. In fact, we believe this exposition may well be the only place in the world where such a wide range of technologies and solutions will be on display in an interactive environment." Burning Man has long been recognized as a nexus of ideas, information, and culture, a physical collection of human nodes for interactivity and information exchange. It is a place where artists, innovators, and the media share ideas and network like nowhere else on Earth. In addition to directly reaching participants and through extensive media coverage, Burning Man will be opened to the world through a unique collaboration with Google, in a virtual 3D version of event called "Burning Man Earth", which will allow a global audience to experience the Green Man Pavilion. View full invite at: http://burningman.com/environment/pavilion_invitation.html For information on how to propose a contribution to the Green Man Pavilion, please email: greenman-exposition@burningman.com |
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May 15 - Business Basics: Flying Under A Green Flag, Forbes |
Every Monday morning Ushma Pandya packs a suitcase and flies to San Antonio for a portion of the workweek. All that flying helps her rack up lots of frequent flier miles. But it also takes a toll on Mother Nature. That's why she and many of her fellow business consultants at Katzenbach Partners try to be eco-friendly when they travel for work. These days, it's not that hard to do. With a growing number of companies urging their employees to travel more sustainably, there are plenty of vendors marketing their "green-ness." PD: This article discusses the ecological impacts of travel and ways that people can reduce those impacts, both as individuals and in business. |
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May 14 - CEO Guide to Technology: Averting the IT Energy Crunch, by Rachael King |
As a threat to operations and the bottom line, corporate computing's fast-growing power consumption is forcing companies to adopt green energy practices Engineers at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) made a startling realization about the servers running the company's computing systems. Surging power consumption, along with rising energy costs, will soon make it more expensive to keep a server going for a year than to acquire one in the first place. Left unchecked, costs like these could interfere with HP's goal of cutting energy consumption 15% by 2010. So when HP began constructing a new 50,000-square-foot building to house high-powered computers, it sought advice from Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG). By following the California power company's recommendations, HP will save $1 million a year in power costs for that data center alone, PG&E says. Like HP, companies across the globe are adding equipment to keep up with surging computing needs&emdash;and then are forced to make substantial changes to curtail the leap in costs associated with running the big buildings, or data centers, housing all that gear. "Data centers use 50 times the energy per square foot as an office [does]," says Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager at PG&E. Industry experts say the power consumption of data centers is doubling every five years or so, making them one of the fastest-growing drags on energy in the U.S. "The IT industry is where the automotive industry was 20 years ago," says Rakesh Kumar, research vice-president at consulting firm Gartner (IT). "We are so backwards when it comes to using alternative-energy and energy-efficient technologies." www..businessweek.com/technology/content/may2007/tc20070514_003603.htm?campaign_id=yhoo |
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May 14 - SPECIAL REPORT, On the sunny side of the street, By Stephanie I. Cohen, MarketWatch |
Goals of new solar technology: more attractive, cheaper products Solar technology has become a darling of renewable energy advocates and venture capitalists, but solar panels have always suffered from a bit of an image problem in some tree-lined communities. Curbside appeal has never been a selling point for solar manufacturers and plenty of homeowners and neighborhood governing groups still see the technology as a bit too new-age, sitting on a rooftop soaking up the sun's heat. But what if solar panels were invisible or at least bore more of a resemblance to a traditional rooftop than an oversized baking sheet? Solar companies PowerLight, BP Solar and Dow Chemical Co. are working hard to solve the technology's esthetic challenges by developing solar systems that generate power but also disappear into the exterior walls, rooftops and window treatments of buildings. These products are commonly referred to by industry insiders as BIPV -- building integrated photovoltaics or built-in photovoltaics. |
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May 14 - Bush Takes Aim At Greenhouse Gases, CBS News/AP |
President Orders Cuts In Gas Consumption And Vehicle Emissions By End Of 2008 President Bush responded Monday to a Supreme Court ruling by ordering federal agencies to find a way to begin regulating vehicle emissions by the time he leaves office. ...That amounts to the final days of his administration, reports CBS News White House ...The agencies involved include the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. Last month, the Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration for its inaction on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, it declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and thus can be regulated by the EPA. The court also said that the "laundry list" of reasons the administration has given for declining to do so are insufficient, and that the EPA must regulate carbon dioxide, the leading gas linked to global warming, if it finds that it endangers public health. Democrats who control Congress have been pressuring the administration to say when it will comply with the high court's ruling and decide whether to regulate carbon dioxide. It was unlikely they would be satisfied with the lengthy process laid out by the president. ...The environmental group Environmental Defense said the effort "will fall far short of fixing the climate problem" without mandatory caps on carbon emissions. www..cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/14/politics/main2801016.shtml |
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May 9 - Plastic bags... how passé! |
A trip to the grocery store is becoming a lot more fashionable as environmentally conscious consumers look to designer totes to bag their greens and express their style. Hermes, Stella McCartney and Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni are among the top designers now offering reusable shopping bags that are chic and pricey. |
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May 7 - Wal-Mart to Buy Solar Energy for Stores, AP |
Wal-Mart Plans to Buy Solar Power for Hawaii, California Stores in Alternative Energy Project Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday said it would buy solar power from three companies in a pilot project to decide if solar power is a viable energy alternative for the mass merchandiser. ... The project covers 22 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores and a distribution center in California and Hawaii. Wal-Mart estimates the solar systems will supply up to 30 percent of the stores' power usage. The project is part of the company's broader effort to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming. The project should also reduce energy costs, the company said. |
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May 3 - Solar energy shines at CleanTech conference, By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch |
Solar energy emerged as the front-runner among a bevy of alternative-power segments, measured by ability to deliver immediate commercial benefits to Wall Street, according to analysts running the Jefferies CleanTech Conference. ... Growth in wind energy is expected to continue, with interest also building behind advanced batteries, biofuels, and fuel-cell technology that uses energy from natural gas. |
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May 3 - SoCo: United against global warming?, By Katy Hillenmeyer, Press Democrat |
The federal Environmental Protection Agency is hailing Sonoma County as the first in the country to unite all its local governments behind climate protection -- a feat the EPA credits to the Graton-based Climate Protection Campaign. The nonprofit group that's fighting global warming won one of 17 Climate Protection awards the EPA gave this week, joining corporations and individuals -- from Mitsubishi Motors and Staples to Robert Redford -- whose environmental leadership the agency honored. |
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May 2 - Honeybee die-off threatens food supply, By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer |
Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet. Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons. In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program. "This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said. ...Even before this disorder struck, America's honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins. PD NOTE: Ah, blaming the victim for bees being killed by toxics! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070502/ap_on_sc/honeybee_die_off_6 |
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May 1 - Nations to set own oil agendas-energy round-table, Reuters |
Rising oil prices will exert less influence on future oil supply as national oil companies take control of production decisions from the international exploration companies, said a member of an energy round-table on Tuesday. ... In an informal survey of the audience, 69 percent said national oil companies, which control most of the world's proven oil reserves, are already in the driver's seat and will "dictate the rules" of where and when oil is produced going forward. ...Only 15 percent of the attendees said major oil companies will control future exploration and production based on market conditions. |
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May 1 - Brown-Forman plans layoffs, By Kevin McCallum, Press Democrat |
24 workers at Sonoma-Cutrer, Fetzer affected by cuts; 500 acres in Paso Robles to be sold PD NOTE: Brown-Forman owns Fetzer's organic Bonterra brand. In a dramatic change of direction for that brand, Fetzer's well-known Valley Oaks wine center in Hopland (Mendocino County) was closed about a year ago. Brown-Forman is restructuring its California wine operations, laying off 7 percent of its work force at Fetzer Vineyards in Mendocino County and Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards in Windsor. ...The layoffs will hit 14 employees at Fetzer, Mendocino's largest winery, and 10 workers at Sonoma-Cutrer....The changes are part of a larger effort by Brown-Forman to centralize management of its wine operations at its headquarters in Louisville, Ky., spokesman Jim Caudill said.... About a year ago, the company began dismantling the wine division, integrating the sales and marketing force into the rest of the company.... "This is a fine-tuning of the restructuring effort that started a year ago," Caudill said. Fetzer produces about 4 million cases of wine and employs approximately 300 employees, while Sonoma-Cutrer makes about 225,000 cases and employs about 30 people. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070501/NEWS/705010390/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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April 30 - Keepers of the Flame: Light still burning, By Nathan Halverson, Press Democrat |
Owners of Cotati's North Light Books sell store but don't plan to be idle, or silent Barbara Iannoli and Carolina Clare are selling out -- but definitely not their ideals. The civic-minded owners of North Light Books & Cafe, who helped get a moratorium on building fast-food franchises in Cotati, are selling their store and edging toward retirement. On June 1, they will hand over ownership to Daniela Zazzeron, a Sonoma State University grad, who plans to keep the 15-year-old bookstore at the center of community activism and on the left side of politics. Zazzeron will slowly take over as she learns the business. And Iannoli and Clare will step into the background, helping customers find the perfect book or picking out the best organic produce for the cafe, but no longer managing. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070430/NEWS/704300308/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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April 20 - Report: Big Oil to Benefit From Melting Arctic Ice, Posted by WSJ.com Staff |
The rapid melting of Arctic ice is opening up new waters to oil exploration, furthering the world's use of fossil fuels &emdash; and contributing to more global warming and still more Arctic-ice melting, according to a new equity research report today. PD NOTE: Amazing propoganda to pitch this destruction as having a benefit. This is how far this culture will go to maintain it's destructive lifestyle. ...The report, by Bernstein Research analysts Neil McMahon and Oswald Clint, says the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that one quarter of the world's undiscovered resources of oil and natural gas lie under Arctic waters. They suggest that estimate &emdash; made in 2000 &emdash; could understate the amount of reserves in the Arctic. Comments include: How funny, because Wood Mackenzie just completed an arctic survey saying the exact opposite. Should we trust the people who (presumably) have been there, or Bernstein, who (presumably) have not? PD NOTE: Does anyone know about this other report? |
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April 11 - U.S. gasoline over $3 looms this summer, By Haitham Haddadin, Reuters |
Looks like deja vu this summer for American motorists, with $3-plus gasoline pump prices looming again as a double whammy of refinery outages and slow imports collide with strong demand. Analysts say supplies of gasoline -- now at the lower end of a five-year average -- will keep falling while demand grows 1 to 2 percent, by far outpacing last year's 0.5 percent growth. ... Analysts say motorists' appetite for gasoline remains healthy, and they probably will adjust to higher prices. "$3 gasoline causes behavior change but doesn't cause people to drive less. They buy cheaper beer or go to fewer movies but keep driving ... like we say here in Texas 'I've been to this rodeo before'," said Pickering's Pursell. http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/070411/market_gasoline_outlook.html?.v=1&.pf=loans |
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April 11 - ConocoPhillips Joins Climate Group, John Porretto, AP Business Writer |
ConocoPhillips Joins Climate Group, Supports Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions ConocoPhillips has joined several other major corporations urging Congress to require limits on greenhouse gases tied to global warming, the first major U.S. oil company to take such a stance. The company said Wednesday it has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of big business and environmental groups that in January sent a letter to President Bush stating that mandatory emissions caps are needed to reduce the flow of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. Other companies that belong to the partnership include London-based oil major BP PLC and the U.S. industrial products and media conglomerate General Electric Co. "We recognize that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is contributing to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that can lead to adverse changes in global climate," said Jim Mulva, ConocoPhillips' chairman and chief executive. ...ConocoPhillips has said it will spend $150 million this year on the research and development of new energy sources and technologies -- a 50 percent increase in spending from 2006. ...Mulva said the company has followed the climate change debate for several years, though the call for mandatory limits on greenhouse gases is an abrupt departure from his views on the issue as recently as January. ...He said much of ConocoPhillips' focus was on finding ways to produce ethanol, an alternative already in use, and renewable diesel fuel more efficiently. ...Many of the companies already have voluntarily moved to curb greenhouse emissions, they said. But the executives noted they don't believe voluntary efforts will suffice. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070411/conocophillips_climate.html?.v=4 |
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April 3 - Honda Leads Environmental Group's Report, By David Aguilar, Associated Press Writer |
Japanese Carmakers Tops in Environmental Group's Report Japanese automakers are driving Americans toward a cleaner environment, while their U.S. counterparts are producing cars and trucks ranked among the worst when it comes to smog emissions and global warming, according to a report released Tuesday by an environmental group. Honda and Toyota lead the rankings of a biennial report produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists, while Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler come in last at sixth, seventh and eighth places, respectively. ..."I think what we see is there is still a big gap between the cleanest and the dirtiest vehicles," said Don MacKenzie, author of the study... ...Honda Motor Co. earned its fourth consecutive "Greenest Automaker" distinction. |
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March 21 - Massive Diversion of U.S. Grain to Fuel Cars Is Raising World Food Prices, Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute |
PD NOTE: I feel that Lester Brown is one of the best innovative public policy thinkers of our time. If you think you are spending more each week at the supermarket, you may be right. The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide. Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in 10 years, and rice prices are rising too. In addition, soybean futures have risen by half. A Bloomberg analysis notes that the soaring use of corn as the feedstock for fuel ethanol "is creating unintended consequences throughout the global food chain." PD NOTE: Amazing. This outcome was totally predictable AND predicted beforehand, but the culture rushed in as if this was the magic remedy and we could continue our current consuming ways, just with biofuel replacements. Now they act as if no one could've known! ...In Mexico, one of more than 20 countries with a corn-based diet, the price of tortillas is up by 60 percent. Angry Mexicans in crowds of up to 75,000 have taken to the streets in protest, forcing the government to institute price controls on tortillas. Food prices are also rising in China, India, and the United States, countries that contain 40 percent of the world's people. While relatively little corn is eaten directly in these countries, vast quantities are consumed indirectly in meat, milk, and eggs in both China and the United States. ... In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the wholesale price of chicken in 2007 will be 10 percent higher on average than in 2006, the price of a dozen eggs will be up a whopping 21 percent, and milk will be 14 percent higher. And this is only the beginning. In the past, food price rises have usually been weather related and always temporary. This situation is different. As more and more fuel ethanol distilleries are built, world grain prices are starting to move up toward their oil-equivalent value in what appears to be the beginning of a long-term rise. The food and energy economies, historically separate, are now merging. In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will move it into the energy economy. As the price of oil climbs so will the price of food. Some 16 percent of the 2006 U.S. grain harvest was used to produce ethanol. With 80 or so ethanol distilleries now under construction, enough to more than double existing ethanol production capacity, nearly a third of the 2008 grain harvest will be going to ethanol. Since the United States is the leading exporter of grain, shipping more than Canada, Australia, and Argentina combined, what happens to the U.S. grain crop affects the entire world. With the massive diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars, exports will drop. The world's breadbasket is fast becoming the U.S. fuel tank. The number of hungry people in the world has been declining for several decades, but in the late 1990s the trend reversed and the number began to rise. ...Urban food protests in response to rising food prices in low and middle income countries, such as Mexico, could lead to political instability that would add to the growing list of failed and failing states. At some point, spreading political instability could disrupt global economic progress. Against this backdrop, Washington is consumed with "ethanol euphoria." President Bush in his State of the Union address set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels, including grain-based and cellulosic ethanol, and liquefied coal. Given the current difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and given the mounting public opposition to liquefied coal, which is far more carbon-intensive than gasoline, most of the fuel to meet this goal might well have to come from grain. This could take most of the U.S. grain harvest, leaving little grain to meet U.S. needs, much less those of the hundred or so countries that import grain. The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's 2 billion poorest people. The risk is that millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling off as higher food prices drop their consumption below the survival level. In February 2007 the World Food Programme Director James T. Morris reported that 18,000 children are now dying every day from hunger and malnutrition. This daily loss of life is six times the number of U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq over the last four years. There are alternatives to this grim scenario. A rise in auto fuel efficiency standards of 20 percent, phased in over the next decade would save as much oil as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol. One option that is gaining momentum is a shift to plug-in hybrids. ... If this shift were accompanied by investment in thousands of wind farms that could feed cheap electricity into the grid, then cars could run largely on electricity for the equivalent cost of $1 per gallon gasoline. Encouragingly, three auto manufacturers--Toyota, Nissan, and GM--have announced plans to bring plug-in hybrid cars to market. ...Ethanol euphoria is not an acceptable substitute for a carefully thought through policy. For Washington, it is time to decide whether to continue with the current policy of subsidizing more and more grain-based fuel distilleries or to encourage a shift to more fuel-efficient cars and a new automotive fuel economy centered on plug-in hybrid cars and wind energy. The choice is between a future of rising world food prices, spreading hunger, and growing political instability, or one of stable food prices, sharply reduced dependence on oil, and much lower carbon emissions. Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. See also "Distillery Demand for Grain to Fuel Cars Vastly Understated" at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2007/Update63.htm. Additional resources at www.earthpolicy.org |
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Feb 1 - Innovation in the Age of Mass Collaboration, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, The BusinessWeek Wikinomics Series |
The co-authors of the recent bestseller Wikinomics explain how businesses across the board can spur innovation by going Wiki A few years back, Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp (GG) was in trouble. Besieged by strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production, the company had terminated mining operations... Without evidence of substantial new gold deposits, Goldcorp was likely to fold. Chief Executive Officer Rob McEwen needed a miracle. Frustrated that his in-house geologists couldn't reliably estimate the value and location of the gold on his property, McEwen did something unheard of in his industry: He published his geological data on the Web for all to see and challenged the world to do the prospecting. The "Goldcorp Challenge" made a total of $575,000 in prize money available to participants who submitted the best methods and estimates. ...News of the contest spread quickly around the Internet and more than 1,000 virtual prospectors from 50 countries got busy crunching the data. ...Goldcorp was hardly the first company to go open-source. ... But Goldcorp isn't a dot-com kind of company. Mining is one of the world's oldest industries, and it's governed by some pretty conventional thinking. Take Industry Rule No. 1: Don't share your proprietary data. The fact that McEwen went open-source was a stunning gamble. And even McEwen was surprised by how handsomely the gamble paid off. Within weeks, submissions from around the world were flooding into Goldcorp headquarters. ... The contestants identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, more than 80% of which yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated, an astounding 8 million ounces of gold have been found&emdash;worth well over $3 billion. Not a bad return on a half million dollar investment. ...The lesson for business leaders is that the old monolithic multinational that creates value in a closed hierarchical fashion is dead. Winning companies today have open and porous boundaries and compete by reaching outside their walls to harness external knowledge, resources, and capabilities. Rather than do everything internally, these companies set a context for innovation and then invite their customers, partners, and other third parties to co-create their products and services. http://yahoo.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm |
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June 14 - Exxon says it never doubted climate change threat, By Gerard Wynn, Reuters |
PD NOTE: This is an amazing moment, when finally Exxon wants to appear green. Talk about your laggards. It does feel like quite a rewrite of history, though. Does anyone have a quote that crystalizes their long-term opposition to addressing global climate change? Or was it only through their front groups that they did this? LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. never in the past decade doubted the risk from climate change, its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen said on Thursday, in a latest attempt to improve its green credentials. Exxon (XOM.N: Quote, Profile , Research) had simply firmed up, or "evolved", its understanding of the threat, said Cohen, the company's head of public affairs. The world's most profitable company now accepted that a U.S. climate policy was inevitable and it preferred either a carbon market that would allocate carbon credits solely to suppliers of fossil fuels, such as oil companies, or else a carbon tax, Cohen added. ..."We're very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up," Cohen told reporters. ...Exxon now sees as inevitable a federal U.S. law to penalise greenhouse gas emissions, for example through a carbon tax or trading scheme. It prefers what Cohen called an "upstream cap and trade" carbon market, capping emissions at the level of fossil fuel suppliers, rather than energy consumers like utilities, arguing that this would distribute carbon costs more evenly through an economy. ..."It will not be a profit-maker if the rights are sold. The devil's in the detail," said Cohen. PD NOTE: Ah, has their thinking changed, or is it just that they see the writing on the wall and now want to help structure a plan that best meets their interests. |
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June 14 - Whole Foods: Grand Opening in Sonoma - Whole Foods Press Release |
Our 4th Sonoma County location has everything you'd expect from Whole Foods Market and a whole lot more. Located in the heart of one of the country's greatest agricultural, viticultural and gastronomical regions, you'll find an abundance of locally produced products and fresh foods at Whole Foods Market Sonoma. Enjoy foods made to order with local ingredients in our Sonoma Kitchen. The kitchen features a breakfast menu and tossed to order salads, pastas and entrees--all highlighting the bounty of Sonoma county! The store will feature products from Vella Cheese, Basque Bakery, Cline Vineyards, Gundlach Bundschu, BR Cohn, Artisan Bakery, The Olive Press, Sonoma Pasta Company and a whole lot more. Whole Foods Market | 201 W. Napa St., Sonoma |
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June 13 - Tech Giants Want to Go Green, By Terence Chea, AP |
Google, Intel launch initiative to increase efficiency of PCs, servers to cut electricity consumption MOUNTAIN VIEW -- A coalition of technology companies and environmental groups led by Google Inc. and Intel Corp. launched an initiative Tuesday to conserve electricity and curb global warming emissions by making the world's computers and servers more energy-efficient. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, organized by Internet search leader Google and computer chip maker Intel, sets ambitious industry targets to ramp up the energy efficiency of computing gear over the next four years. The plan aims to cut the amount of electricity computers consume in half by 2010 using existing power-saving technologies. Currently, the average PC wastes about half of the power it consumes, while the average server squanders about one-third, officials said. "Let's create a more efficient IT industry by driving up the efficiency of computers," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president for Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "We think we can have huge savings in terms of carbon footprint and energy costs." The initiative is expected to save more than $5.5 billion in electricity costs by 2010 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change by 54 million tons annually -- an amount equal to eliminating 11 million cars or 20 large coal-fired power plants each year, company officials said. Gelsinger estimated that energy-efficiency technology would initially make computers about $20 more expensive and servers about $30 costlier, but consumers are expected to recoup the costs through lower electricity bills and rebates from utilities. "It will also make computers better," Google co-founder Larry Page said at the news conference at company headquarters in Mountain View. "By taking out some of the inefficiencies of computers, it will make them quieter and more reliable." Manufacturers that take part in the initiative agree to design, produce and sell equipment that meet its energy-efficiency standards. The initiative requires computing gear to initially meet the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star standard of 80 percent efficiency, with the target rising to 90 percent by 2010. Participating companies also agree to buy corporate computers and servers that meet those targets and follow guidelines to maximize their equipment's energy efficiency. Electric utilities will be encouraged to offer rebates to consumers who buy the energy-efficient gear. Organizers also plan to launch a campaign to educate consumers, corporations and governments on how to use their computers more efficiently, mainly by using power-saving settings that put PCs into "sleep" or "hibernate" mode when they're not being used. The initiative's initial backers include Dell Inc., Hewlett Packard Inc., Hitachi Ltd., International Business Machines Corp., Lenovo, Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Yahoo Inc. It's also supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the EPA and the World Wildlife Fund. The initiative is an extension of WWF's Climate Savers program, which helps corporations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Boosting the energy efficiency of computers and servers is an important step in combating global warming, said WWF senior vice president John Donoghue, adding that a recent study estimated that computing is responsible for 2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. "The opportunity represented by energy use from computing is tremendous," Donoghue said. www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070613/NEWS/706130376/1036/BUSINESS01 |
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June 12 - Food prices jump 3.7%, Press Democrat (Cover story) |
Drought, freezes, rising cost of corn are pushing supermarket tabs ever higher Kristen Lawson finds herself in a pricey predicament. When the Santa Rosa mom packs up her 3-year-old twins to go food shopping, she likes to hit more than one store to find good prices. "There goes my gas bill," she says with a thumb pointing skyward. "And even when you drive around, it's getting harder and harder to find deals." First gas, now food. The household budget is getting no relief these days. Prices are going up for much of what gets dumped into the grocery cart -- including cereals, bread, bacon, pork roasts, chicken, eggs, cookies, hot dogs, oranges, soda pop and dried beans. New federal statistics show that food prices rose 3.7 percent nationally in April, and the outlook is equally chilling wherever you shop. It is happening for many reasons: inflation, drought, freezing weather, even the rising cost of corn -- highly sought after not only as ingredients for thousands of food products, but also to make ethanol. Food prices in 2007 are increasing at their highest rate in years. PD NOTE: I'm hearing oil prices two places in here - yes, the rising cost of corn, driving by increasing demand for ethanl - but also in "inflation", because increased fuel costs are likely being added into other costs along the way. These are the dots in the picture that one would expect from peak oil, the rumbling of much bigger impacts to come. ...Vendors blame many price hikes on the ethanol market, Gong said. "If farmers and ranchers can get more money raising corn or wheat for ethanol than growing feed for cattle or dairy cows, that's going to push the prices of milk and beef up," Gong explained. PD NOTE: Notice the ripple effect of ethanol > corn prices up drastically > other food prices up drastically. ...Where a year ago shoppers saw decreases for some items, including breakfast cereals, beef roasts, pork, chicken, cheese and olives, about the only foods showing any dips in price this year are butter, bananas and frozen vegetables. ...The real problem, according to food manufacturers and supermarket executives, is the run-up in fuel prices and the cost of grain, which has soared as an ever growing amount of corn is diverted to make ethanol to mix with gasoline. "Corn prices have moved up significantly as demand for ethanol taps supplies . . . which will impact overall inflation levels throughout the year," Jeff Noddle, chief executive of Supervalu Inc., reported to shareholders last month. Supervalu owns Albertsons and other grocery stores. The price of a bushel of corn has jumped 46 percent to $3.66 over the past 12 months, and earlier this year topped $4, according to DTN, an agriculture information company in Omaha, Neb. "It has been a remarkable run," said Michael Swanson, an agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co. Swanson said corn is the culprit in his estimate that food inflation will reach the 4 percent to 4.5 percent range this year, the highest since 1990. That's because corn is the building block for much of the American food supply. It is what dairy cows eat to make milk and hens consume to lay eggs. It fattens cattle, hogs and chickens before slaughter -- depending on the animal it takes anywhere from 2.5 to 6 pounds of feed corn to produce a pound of meat. Corn syrup is the third-largest ingredient in Heinz ketchup and is the sweetener that goes into soda pop and hundreds of other food items. Corn also is the building block of the 7 billion gallons of ethanol made in the United States this year, a figure that is on its way to 14 billion gallons by 2011, according toestimates by Iowa State University. ...Ethanol now gobbles 18 percent of the domestic corn supply, up from just 10 percent in 2002, Babcock said. The growth of ethanol production is spurred by its status as a renewable fuel and a 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit for buyers who then blend it with gasoline. As farmers discover just how golden corn has become, they are replanting fields formerly devoted to wheat, soy and other foods with corn, driving up the price of even more food commodities. Soy is up 28 percent to $7.41 a bushel, DTN said. Meanwhile, smaller-than-expected crops in the United States and Australia have pushed the price of wheat up 22 percent to $4.80 a bushel from a year ago. That's why shoppers are paying more for bread and other baked goods. ...Indeed, Tyson will pay a third more, or $300 million, for corn and grain this year, Bond said at an April 30 press conference. "Most people couldn't stand this type of grain increase without some form of price increase." www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070612/NEWS/706120341/1033/NEWS01 |
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June 13 - Dean Foods Cuts Yearly Forecast as Milk Prices Soar, By Daniel Goldstein, Bloomberg |
Dean Foods Co., the biggest U.S. milk processor, cut its profit forecast for the second time this year because of soaring raw-milk costs and lower prices for organic dairy products. The shares fell the most in a month. ...The cost of the raw milk that Dean processes has jumped 66 percent in the past year on rising global demand for dairy products, including butter and cheese. Chief Executive Officer Gregg Engles, who predicted a profit drop May 3, said today that milk will keep rising in the third quarter. Dean also has cut prices in its Horizon unit because of a glut of organic milk. ``Supplies are going to be tighter because when the weather heats up you don't get as much production from your cows,'' said Peter Turk, a dairy trader with Rice Dairy LLC in Chicago. ``The market is going to be higher.'' ...Prices already are at or near records. Futures for Class 3 milk, the variety used in making cheese, rose to a record $21.38 per 100 pounds today on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Skim-milk powder, the benchmark for world trade, has risen 61 percent this year and reached a record $1.85 a pound on June 5. ...The world's dairy farmers also have failed to keep pace with a 3 percent increase in annual milk consumption, according to Rabobank Groep in the Netherlands, the world's biggest agricultural lender. Reduced subsidies eliminated milk surpluses in Europe and slowed production growth in the U.S., government data show. The rally started last year after Australia reduced exports because of its worst drought in a century. PD NOTE: Every time I hear worst of a weather condition, I have to wonder if this is really another symptom of global warming. Higher feed costs, especially for alfalfa hay, corn and soybeans, are expected to limit production growth in 2008, the USDA said yesterday in a monthly production report. Corn prices surged 81 percent last year and reached a 10-year high in February as demand for grain-based ethanol rose to a record. PD NOTE: A continuing (and predicted) theme - one of the costs of rushing into ethanol as a cure-oil for oil prices and global warming is the predictable increase in food prices. An even bigger cost is that we just don't have enough land to grow that much corn, and trying to will convert even more wild lands into flattened toxic GMO wastelands. A true solution must including reducing our energy consumption drastically, through conservation, efficiency, and adjustments to land use planning, transportation systems, and more. ``Producers are more reluctant to buy more cows when feed costs are high,'' said Shayle Shagam, a senior analyst for livestock, dairy and poultry at the USDA's Office of the Chief Economist. ``Animals also eat lower-quality feed as a result of the higher prices, and that hurts production.'' PD NOTE: You mean, like the toxic-filled feed from China, that also went into pet food? What's the health impact of that little ripple? www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alryW2k4MMwc&refer=home |
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June 7 - Quebec to apply Canada's first carbon tax, Reuters |
The Quebec government plans to begin applying Canada's first carbon tax this fall to help fund its plans to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The cabinet for Quebec's minority Liberal government approved the tax, which will apply to some 50 companies...For motorists, the tax amounts to 0.8 Canadian cents for each litre of gasoline. The tax, proposed more than a year ago, takes effect Oct. 1 and will be applied on other hydrocarbons at different rates, including per-litre taxes of 0.9 Canadian cents for diesel fuel and 0.96 Canadian cents for light heating oil, as well as C$8 a tonne for coal. Quebec's Natural Resources Minister Claude Bechard said he hoped oil companies would absorb the tax rather than pass it on to consumers, but analysts said they expect retail prices to rise. ...The estimated C$200 million ($188 million) of annual tax revenues brought in by the new levy would be used to fund the provinces plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions and improve public transit. |
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June 7 - The Pro Shop: Stanford Professor Slams Office Bullies, Work Jerks, By Lisa Scherzer |
ROBERT SUTTON, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford, has become a reluctant Dr. Phil. Instead of counseling overweight, cheated-on alcoholics, he ministers to victims of workplace bullies and the companies that harbor them. Ever since his book, "The No A--hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't," came out in March, emails from people eager to unload their you-wouldn't-believe-the-jerk-I-work-with stories inundate Sutton's inbox. (He shares the more interesting ones on his blog1.) Every office has at least one. It's that person who doesn't look you in the eye during conversation, makes ethnic slurs, intimidates, insults, belittles or condescends. And if you think you don't know one, well, then it might be you. The book addresses the widespread problem of social friction in the workplace and how it can affect morale, undermine performance and cost a company dearly in both talent and money. How much money? Sutton, who also posts on Arianna Huffington's blog2, says while estimating the "TCA," or "total cost of a--holes," is difficult, it's an instructive way to think about the costs of putting up with bullies at work. Sutton cites a Silicon Valley company that calculated the cost associated with one of its most highly paid salespeople, a "certified a--hole" who had a terrible temper, insulted co-workers, and had to attend anger-management classes (on the company dime). Managers estimated that costs in terms of time and dollars spent related to this employee's treatment of people totaled about $160,000. It is possible, Sutton says, to build an effective company that screens out jerks. Some even have some variation of a "no a--hole rule" of their own. For example, Seattle law firm Perkins Coie espouses and acts on a "no jerks allowed" rule, which helped it earn a spot on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list in 2006 for the fourth year in a row. Most importantly, the company applies the rule when conducting job interviews. Two of the firm's partners were tempted to hire a superstar lawyer from another firm but realized he was a jerk and decided to pass. Of course, jerks don't always do more harm than good. Unleashing your inner a--hole can help you "gain power, vanquish rivals and motivate fear-fueled performance," Sutton writes. Still, he says, you don't have to act like a jerk to have a successful career. Even if organizations weren't necessarily better off barring nasty people, he'd still want them to enforce the no a--hole rule: "[Life] is too short and too precious to spend our days surrounded by jerks." ...SM: What exactly is a no a--hole rule? How is it implemented? RS: I think it means different things in different places. In the investment world, it means being cooperative and supportive. In law firms, I think it literally means not screaming at people. My wife is a lawyer, so I have some insight into this. Some of these rainmakers have overinflated views of themselves. They can be nasty. The first publication to do a reprint of the last chapter of my book was American Lawyer. I took that as a sign. The worst profession [for bullying] is nurses. There have been studies on this that show nurses receive the highest level of abuse and being picked on. Surgeons look particularly mean. ...SM: Can you explain Intel's use of "constructive confrontation"? RS: It doesn't mean you have a bunch of wimps in your organization. There's a difference between being abusive and being a doormat. Intel is interesting because their idea is you're supposed to learn how to fight without demeaning others. Probably a better example is the lab at Xerox Park that developed the technology that made computers possible. They say you should always attack people's ideas, but never demean people personally. It's fighting in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Recently I had a conversation with people from [Walt Disney's (DIS11)] Pixar. One guy who seemed to be the keeper of the organization's culture said "we pride ourselves on bringing in weirdos, people who are different, to make films, but we can't tolerate people demeaning other people." ...SM: You discuss some of the virtues of a--holes toward the end of your book. What are they? RS: There are a lot of advantages to being an a--hole: dominating people, leaving a trail of demeaned and de-energized people. Especially if you're in a competitive, I-win-you-lose environment, it helps. There's something called brilliant but cruel. If you simply criticize someone's work, it's not as good as if you throw in a personal insult. My perspective on this is there are times when fear does motivate people. Even if it helps you win, you're still an a--hole. So it depends on what you view as success. www.smartmoney.com/theproshop/index.cfm?story=20070607&afl=yahoo *** |
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June 6 - Pharmaceuticals Contaminating Public Water Supplies, NewsTarget/Truth Publishing, June 6, 2007 |
Pharmaceuticals contaminating public water supplies; anti-seizure meds found in Lake Michigan Pharmaceuticals, including birth-control hormones and anti-seizure medications, have been found in Lake Michigan and public water supplies, according to a new study. The study was jointly sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Pharmacists Association. The water system examined serves more than a quarter-million people in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Walker, part of Kentwood, Ada, Cascade and Grand Rapids townships, as well as parts of Ottawa County. In Lake Michigan, near the Grand Rapids water filtration plant, tests found traces of Tylenol, ibuprofen, hormones from birth-control pills, and some beta blockers in heart medication, Department of Environmental Quality toxicologist Amy Perbeck stated. In treated water at the Grand Rapids water filtration plant, scientists found traces of the anti-seizure medication carbamazepine, she said. The drugs were measured in parts per trillion -- too small to be considered a "therapeutic dose" in humans, said Perbeck. ... However, Perbeck expressed concern about the effect of birth-control hormones on fish, stating "The fish are constantly exposed to hormones." In some parts of the country, scientists have found male fish with female ovarian tissues. Professor Rick Rediske, senior program manager at Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute, pointed out even the smallest amounts of pharmaceuticals, as well as substances such as anti-bacterial soap, could harm aquatic life. ...While some scientists claim the drugs are too diluted to harm humans, they acknowledge no one knows the dangers of lifetime exposure. "Pharmaceuticals are toxic chemicals that pollute the environment, and the pharmaceutical industry has so far refused to take responsibility for the environmental impact of its products," explained Mike Adams, author of The Real Safety Guide to Protecting Your Environment, "Consumers need to be warned that popping pills is not just harmful to your own health; it's also harmful to the health of water supplies and aquatic systems." |
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www..healthyworld.org/newsblogNov04_May07.html
Very inspiring and informative speakers offering refreshing perspectives on the state of our shared work for the environment, saner politics, and healthier communities.
I especially commend the incredible speech by Robert F. Kennedy, jr. His writing and speaking offer a compelling combination of clear sight, essential facts, and moving feelings and experiences, so that through his eyes we can see what is and be inspired to join together to create what we want to be. He's also deft at avoiding mental traps that don't serve the larger cause - for instance, false separations between Democrats and Republicans. He says he's committed to being non-partisan, just describing what he sees, and that Americans of both parties share certain core values. Polls show, he says, that they're just getting vastly different information. I highly recommend hearing and reading anything he writes. www.sierrasummit2005.org/sierrasummit/coverage/r050.asp
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