Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Tire incineration is not renewable energy
– Brian Schwartz and Cindy Parker are both physicians and faculty in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. They are also both Fellows of the Post Carbon Institute. The opinions expressed are solely their own. –
How do you solve a problem like David Miller?
According to the Chicago Tribune, he is the Illinois representative who last month, with little fanfare and notice at the time, attempted to modify legislation to include tire burning in the state’s definition of renewable energy.
The bill failed to pass initially but it isn’t dead yet – supporters may attempt to add it to another bill before the General Assembly adjourns.
The amendment was mainly done to allow a company called Geneva Energy to obtain green energy credits for its incinerator in Ford Heights, a village in Cook County approximately 25 miles south of downtown Chicago.
In 2000, the village was 96 percent African-American and had a per capita income less than $9,000, making it one of the poorest suburbs in the United States.
Caveat investor: Wind may let you down
John Laforet is president of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 42 grassroots organizations aiming to curtail development of wind farms in the central Canadian province of Ontario. He is also running for municipal public office.
Governments around the world are actively seeking private development of renewable energy projects by offering generous feed-in tariffs that often see developers paid many times the market rate for the power they produce.
This has encouraged a surge of applications, but the volume of applications and other challenges associated with these projects present potential risks to prospective investors.
Projects require transmission capacity to carry their energy to market, but the agencies accepting applications for a given jurisdiction often aren’t responsible for managing transmission systems.
In the Czech Republic, a boom of renewable projects has caused considerable challenges to the transmission system and has caused the grid operator to block future wind projects, while threatening to disrupt grid connections for existing renewable energy projects.
In Canada, Ontario’s inventory of projects under development, approved or in the proposal stage, does not consider existing grid capacity.
The GEA must comply with Ontario’s Endangered Species Act a point any investor should recognize. Also, wind developments seem to have a revolving door when it comes to company names changing with or questionably with project ownership. Liabilities associated with decommissioning after the life of the turbines should be considered in the evaluation. There are better investments.
Retailers reject oil sands — a good move?
Two big U.S. retail chains have turned their back on Canada’s oil sands, a move that was both hailed and derided, split as you might expect along environmental lines.
Whole Foods and Bed Bath and Beyond this week said they were boycotting the Canadian oil sands and they would actively seek alternatives to oil sands fuel for their delivery trucks to reduce their carbon footprints.
The oil sands are the largest source of oil outside of Saudi Arabia, and most of the 1.2 million barrels a day of oil sands-derived crude gets shipped to the United States.
Unlike conventional oil and gas, production of oil sands is more carbon intensive because it requires the use of hot water and chemicals to glean the the sticky black bitumen from the frozen sands. The used water then collects in toxic ponds.
“We have an entire team dedicated to environmental responsibility and we are always looking for a better option,” Whole Foods spokesperson Libba Letton told the Toronto Star newspaper.
Boycotts allow us to protest and through our free speech we can attempt to affect change. As a habitat steward, I have had to go to the lengths of creating visitor boycott of my community because of enviromental wrong doings. Visit: http://www.nanaimo-visitor-boycott.com
Apple plugs iPod into the sun
Apple apparently has applied for a patent that would allow its megapopular iPods to run on solar power.
The patent drawings suggest the entire surface of the iPod would be covered in solar paneling, save the display screen and click wheel, Geeksmack.net and GreenBeat report.
And before you point out how annoying it would be to have to pull out your iPod for some sunbathing, it doesn’t need direct rays — the technology enables it to function even when covered by your hand. (The jury is still out on if it works when it’s buried in the inside pocket of your windbreaker or backpack, but whatever.)
Nothing worse than when your iPod runs out of juice right in the middle of your favorite song or exercise routine so this could be a nice backup power source to keep it (and you?) running.
What do you think? Would you buy it?
(Image shows patent application diagram of entire surface of the iPod, except for the screen and click wheel, covered in solar panelling, from Geeksmack.net)
I think this is a wonderful idea I don’t think too many people would mind getting a clear covering for thier Ipod instead of a red or black if they knew that it would help extend the batterys life. But thier would be the problem that most Ipods don’t have a clip so therefore to charge your Ipod you would have to hold it. This would be a big inconvience considering most people listen to thier Ipods when thier in the middle of doing something to have some source of entertainment at the same time. But overrall I think it would be a wonderfull Idea. I’m not to sure on that price though it would cost a lot more than it already does, and it already cost a whole lot.
Youth groups bending the ear of business at COP15
There are numerous youth groups at the Copenhagen Climate Conference (they are known as ‘Youngos’, short for young non-governmental organisations) and they have all come here to make sure their collective voice is heard as delegates negotiate an agreement on how to tackle climate change.
Youngos represent a significant portion of the 34,000 people who have registered to attend the conference, and some have even managed to gain access to politicans and business leaders to put pressure on them on ethical business strategies.
One of these unfailingly vocal groups is the United Kingdom Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC), which has travelled to Copenhagen to lobby businesses, investors and world leaders to adopt practices which would safeguard the environment for future generations.
We corralled three of these 18-25 year olds onto a youth panel and asked them to talk about how they are applying this pressure, what they would like to achieve in Copenhagen and the successes they have had so far.
Here is a video of Victoria Barron on the success she has had working with businesses on ethical strategies.
This is Isabelle Ellis-Cockroft talking about how businesses can become stronger by going green.
The answer could be blowing in the wind
Well into the first week of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, the haves and have nots of the world are still divided over who should pay for the cleanup of the planet. Poor countries want rich countries to cough up more ambitious goals for emissions cuts and developing technologies.
From emerging wind and solar industries to geothermal advances, the technologies being tested for adaptability in the fight against climate change are still quite new and in some cases revolutionary.
To kick off today’s discussion, we posed the question to our panel of climate experts: What technology could be the most successful solution to global warming?
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Dr. David Suzuki, geneticist and journalist:
Investors Beware! Upon due diligence of this company we have found no investor to ever be satisfied in any manner. Most are simply afraid to come forward and admit they were defrauded. Google King Vs. Emerald Energy. Furthermore, there is no trademark owned by this company, nor any proprietary technology whatsoever. Contact megafloraplantations.com for more information. They seemed helpful, honest, and we feel we were saved a great loss by not investing.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The MegaFlora Tree is the trademarked name for a fast-growing tree created by Emerald Energy. It was designed to grow much faster than a normal tree. According to their website, it can harvested within 2 years and is designed to grow back after being harvested. They can be grown on marginal land and are claimed to produce exceptional biomass energy density per acre. Today, The megaflora is grown around the world.
References
****************************Emerald Energy (a Nevada Entity) has no such patent or trademark. ***************** The copyright to the name megaflora is owned by companies from Dallas area of Texas where the term was first used commercially with trees and in their company names. These Texas entities still exist legally today and own the copyrighted commercial use of the term megaflora as related to trees. An application was made by Emerald Energy (a Nevada Corporation or LLC) for a Trademark in the US patent office. The US Patent Office denied the application due to existing commercial use and other reasons. (See laws claiming Patent/trademark where none exists in US patent office website)
Emerald Energy (a Nevada Corporation or LLC) that is claiming this megaflora trademark is not related to the Emerald Energy Company in England. The Nevada Company “Emerald Energy” has seemingly attempted to “overlap” its existence by advertising and other means with the Emerald Energy name of the major stock corporation in England.
US Patent office can verify the non-existence of any such patent or trademark. US Patent office also has information on how to file against companies for claiming a non-existent Patent, Copyright and or Trademark.
Source
Description above from the Wikipedia article MegaFlora tree, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.
Blue business washes in
Green is good and blue is better.
Keeping a business sustainable – or blue – goes beyond philanthropic nods to the environment. It needs to be a core business goal, says Adam Werbach, creator of Wal-Mart’s sustainability program and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability wing of the marketing and consultancy company.
Blue innovation embraces the social, cultural, and economic aspects of business along with green issues like protecting our last wild places and reducing carbon emissions.
“Sustainability is about long-term profitability. It doesn’t mean just the environment,” Werbach told a room of 100 business professionals in Toronto on Wednesday, pointing to the four-part breakdown of sustainability built on social, economic, cultural and environmental trends in addition to an integral value of transparency.
“The idea is to think a little bit broader. Of course we need to protect the environment, but there are so many other things to connect to it,” Werbach said, exploring a theme in his new book Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
“This is an extraordinary business opportunity that’s been left to the environmentalists and we need to steal it back and make it the business opportunity to grow companies that are going to be the companies of the future.”
Victoria Kamsler, chief ethics officer and research director at Greenfiniti Consulting and Investment in Toronto and former professor of environmental ethics at Princeton University, said Werbach was on to something with his ideas about internal changes in business culture having to do with transparency and engagement, and motivating employees to engage in purposes that align with their own values and ideals larger than themselves.
I believe I read somewhere that consumers were outraged to find out wal-mart actually has soda refrigerators. But now that the backlights have been replaced, it has held off the public boycott. Customers of wal-mart should begin to see an estimated .000000002345678910111213% difference in global temperatures by 2069. And a .00000777777775656565656566565656646464% price decrease because they feel they should pass the savings onto the consumers. I feel that with such ground breaking ideas as this one, we are on the road to a better more blueish green tomorrow!
Introducing the Reuters Global Green Portfolio
As part of Reuters new Green Business section, we have chosen a diverse group of companies to serve as a proxy for the emerging green technology sector. Over the coming months we’ll be discussing each of them at length, and rebalancing our portfolio to reflect trends in the industry.
Click here to see our portfolio in action. You can track our performance against benchmarks, comment on our choices, and create a portfolio of your own.
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Comverge, Inc is one of the leading demand-response companies, known for their role in limiting electricity use during peak demand, employing technology to manage large companies’ power usage and control their costs. Their software can automatically adjust an air conditioner’s temperature or turn off a swimming pool pump when power supplies are tight, reducing prices for suppliers and end users by lowering end user demand at peak times.
Cree Inc manufactures light emitting diode (LED) fixtures, which consume less energy and last longer than incandescent and fluorescent lights. LED’s are experiencing increased demand as costs for power generation and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions rise, and Cree recently reported a third-quarter profit that topped Wall Street estimates on increased demand for ultra-efficient lighting,
LG Chem Ltd looks at first glance is an old-line industrial company with a petrochemical segment provides basic chemicals like polyvinyl chloride products, plasticizers, octanol, and butanol. But the company’s Compact Power unit is producing the lithium-ion battery for General Motors Volt plug-in, and the company is expected to play a central role as more hybrid autos roll out.
First Solar, Inc designs and manufactures solar modules using a thin film semiconductor technology. Its solar modules employ a thin layer of cadmium telluride semiconductor material to convert sunlight into electricity. The company has benefited from cost-conscious utilities’ efforts to buy more clean, renewable power through deals with Sempra and Edison International’s (EIX.N) Southern California Edison, and expanded its presence in the U.S. utility market in April with the acquisition of rival OptiSolar’s project pipeline.
What I like about this new index is that it is international, which reflects modern trading and investment practices. A few tweaks here and there, based on the recommendations above, plus a few added small-cap companies (which would better represent the sector overall) and this could be a cited index.
