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What price are you willing to pay to get the oil/coal/gas monkey off your back and switch your community to clean energy? Would you accept a long stretch of high-voltage power lines across your favorite scenic vista?
It’s a question I’ve taken on before in a post titled, “What Do I WIMBY (Want In My Backyard)?,” and it’s now cropped up in the news. The place: Southern California. The plan: San Diego Gas & Electric Company’s proposal to build one of the planet’s biggest solar power installations in the desert, along with wind and geothermal facilities. The opposition: environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity.
Why? Because the Sunrise Powerlink clean-energy project calls for 150 miles of high-voltage power lines, including spans through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the Cleveland National Forest and other protected parks and preserves. In fact, state and federal agencies analyzing seven potential routes for power lines ranked the path through Anza-Borrego as the second-worst in terms of potential environmental damage.
In California, and San Francisco in particular, we see almost as many Obama for president placards in home and business windows as we see Stop the Spray signs. It seems like the precursor for a B-grade sci-fi film with the storyline pitting the the government versus this evil moth. But this isn’t Mothra we’re talking about, its the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM).
The situation involves not just the local governments but the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) that claim that the LBAM will cause major destruction of crops in California. The feds think that we must take swift action or suffer the economic impact of quarantines, which they estimate will cost CA millions of dollars.
Something curious happened on the way to this economic thinking. To date, the LBAM has caused ZERO crop damage. The economic damage has been due only to quarantines imposed on the Golden State by Canada and Mexico. When the Feds sprayed Santa Cruz and Monterey counties last fall the counties recorded over 640 health problems. This number represented only the reported cases, and conservative estimates of actual health impacts by local agencies put the number of cases at ten times the number of reports claimed.
Biodiesel lovers of San Francisco, rejoice. Starting next Winter, you might not have as much competition when you scour the back alleys behind Chinese restaurants trying to get your car fuel fix.
That’s because the city has just received a $1 million dollar grant from the California Energy Commission to build San Francisco’s first grease-to-biodiesel production facility.
Instead of using the more popular “yellow grease”—fryer oil— the production facility will make use of “brown grease”, or pan scrapings and oil residue trapped in grease interceptors under a restaurant sink. In the past, brown grease has been discarded at sewage plants. Now San Francisco wants to make use of the more than 2.5 million gallons of the stuff that’s in the city.
Despite claims to the contrary, it seems like General Motors is getting more and more involved in the refueling business. GM has already invested heavily in two different cellulosic ethanol companies (Coskata and Mascoma), and has now partnered with Clean Energy Fuels Corp. to open a hydrogen fueling station near the Los Angeles Int’l Airport (LAX). The station will be located at Clean Energy’s compressed natural gas (CNG) facility and should be operational by the fall.
By Cassie Walker •
June 12, 2008
Just when I finally signed up for Netflix, I find out about a great new film club of a different color (that’s green, of course): Earth Cinema Circle.
Dedicated to providing entertaining films (with an emphasis on the entertaining part) that raise social and environmental awareness, this isn’t your mother’s old book-of-the-month club. With ECC, members receive four films (short, full-length, and documentary films) on one DVD through the mail every other month. The films are yours to keep, or pass along to friends. All packaging is 100% recyclable, and the shipments are carbon neutral, thanks to contributions to The Conservation Fund’s Go Zero program.
By Julie Sammons •
June 11, 2008
Looking for a ten thousand-fold return on your investment? For just $250 and the time it takes to complete a three-page application, you could be the next $100,000 winner of the California Clean Tech Open. Just be sure to submit your bright idea by midnight on June 14th.
Clean Tech Call for Entries
“The California Clean Tech Open is unique among business plan competitions: it seeks entries from professionals, scientists and students alike; focuses solely on clean technology; and […] the prize package of cash, services and office space goes above and beyond other awards and is not typically available to early-stage start-ups.“
Eligible entries are accepted in categories as diverse as green building; smart power; air, water and waste management; energy efficiency; renewables; and transportation. Competition winners will be showered with an incredible array of resources designed to fast-track the startup phase. The generous prize packages include $50,000 in cash, one year of office space, legal and insurance services, marketing support, accounting services, and enrollment in the exclusive Summer Workshop Series for entrepreneurs.
Not ready to share your big idea with the world? CCTO offers a wealth of resources for non-entrants, including:
CCTO Sustainability Starter Kit
Formerly reserved for competition winners, CCTO’s extensive Sustainability Starter Kit is now available for download at no cost to curious clean tech ecopreneurs. Proposing concrete solutions to a broad range of challenges faced by sustainability change agents, the kit includes information on topics such as:
- Sustainable supply chain management
- Waste management strategies
- Company case studies
- The five rules of green marketing
- B2B resources for forward-thinking companies
Looking for ways beyond changing lightbulbs and taking the train to help reduce your carbon footprint? Turns out we all could make a big difference in greenhouse gas emissions by not throwing out so much trash and composting our food waste.
That’s the message from “Stop Trashing the Climate,” a report prepared by The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Eco-Cycle, a non-profit recycler. The study finds that waste prevention and increased recycling and composting could reduce as many greenhouse gas emissions as are produced by 21 percent of the U.S.’s 417 coal-fired power plants.
Back in the day before sustainable and organic represented the trendy food terms, Alice Waters created her restaurant Chez Panisse as a place for her friends and her friend’s friends to eat. On Monday, she spoke with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome who took time off from trying to balance the city’s budget while turning the city Green to act as host for the San Francisco City Speaks forum.
The discussion, which focused around good, sustainable, fair food brought about several issues and illustrated that people and companies continue to “Greenwash” especially where food is concerned. It’s not just saying that your company or business is green or sustainable but rather as Waters said, “ I look for people who really share the same values.” Are you listening Wal-Mart?
With all of the sunshine that we get here in Southern California, we should have solar panels everywhere soaking up all of the free (and clean!) energy. Fortunately for us, SoCal Edison leads the nation in the purchase of renewable energy, a pursuit that helps to spur development projects to provide it.
Just this week, the utility announced that it had signed a new contract for an additional 245 megawatts of solar power with Pasadena-based eSolar. But this isn’t just another massive installation of photovoltaic panels - it’s the nation’s first commercial project to use “power tower solar thermal technology.”
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought today, following two straight years of below-average rainfall, very low snowmelt runoff and the largest court-ordered water transfer restrictions of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in state history.
The governor also issued an Executive Order meant to address related problems caused by the water shortages, such as extreme fire danger due to dry conditions, economic harm to urban and rural communities, loss of crops and the potential to degrade water [...]
Last week, I posted about the tremendous relocalization efforts of the small town of Willits, CA. Earlier today, I had the chance to speak with Liam UiCearbhaill, the Operational Facilitator for Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL), the Willits relocalization group, about a variety of topics, including WELL’s community involvement, current projects, and future plans.
What is your specific role in the WELL organization?
My title is operational facilitator. I perform a number of functions, but the real focus is to help things happen. We try really hard not to be too possessive of any project. We look around the town and see who is already doing something good in a particular area and find ways to help them, and we look where nobody is doing anything and try to find ways to get things started. By using that approach, a lot has happened. There’s an alliance of groups that gets together to do grant writing, for instance.
How did you get involved in WELL?
I moved to this area about 5 years ago because I could perceive there was a problem [environmentally]. As I looked around, this looked like the most survivable area for this stuff I saw coming down the pipe. I was thinking of the environmental catastrophes I saw coming down the horizon, not necessarily peak oil. When WELL started up, it was pretty obvious to me that this was something I needed to get involved in.
