Green Options

At yesterday’s Sustainable Industries Economic Forum, keynote presenter Paul Hawken was asked, “What is the best counterargument to the argument that carbon caps will raise energy costs and hurt our economy?”  In typical Hawken style, his earlier speech was well done, inspiring and insightful.  In typical Hawken style, his off-the-cuff answers to audience questions was where he really shone.  And this answer was perhaps his shining moment of the day.

During yesterday’s Sustainable Industries Economic Forum, keynote speaker Paul Hawken suggested that it will take a somewhat monumental effort to get back to 350 ppm in our atmosphere (we’re at 387 right now). His list was daunting.  We’d need one new olympic sized pool of bioalgae fuel production every second for 25 years, for example.  He said that while being a ‘doomer’ has a negative connotation, the facts are the facts, and that there is a role for this kind of startling statistic.  An audience member asked the question that was on all our minds:  “It seems untenable.  Do you have hope that this can actually happen?”

California has just updated its Air Resources Board website to give consumers a wide range of information about all the alternative power cars coming out next year, from electric cars to diesel hybrids.

The new site—driveclean.ca.gov—offers well-organized data that ranks vehicles according to various emission and cost characteristics and provides tools to compare models on a variety of qualities, including the new incentives that low carbon emission vehicles qualify for: up to $5,000 for cars, and up to $15,000 for electric trucks or vans.

One aspect of the site is revolutionary: For the first time Americans will be able to compare models based on how many grams of CO2 each spews per mile.

It’s been known for a long time that the emissions from coal are harmful, both to the environment and human health. Yet, because it’s so plentiful, the U.S. still gets the majority of its electricity from coal-fired power. With the world focused on increasing the use of plug-in cars, where we get our future electricity becomes a key question.

Yesterday, a medical report was released, “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” highlighting the dangers of coal, by the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Other study participants included the American Lung Association and the American Nurses Association.

Move over CO2—you’ve been ousted, along with methane, as the biggest offenders of global climate change. According to a new a study by Purdue University and NASA, the major chemicals most frequently cited as leading to climate change, namely carbon dioxide and methane, are actually outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention. The majority of “greenhouse gases” are created by humans.

The results were discovered when researchers studied more than a dozen chemicals, or greenhouse gases as classified by their warming properties defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, the team developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appeared in the November 12, 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry, just in time for the convergence of world leaders in Copenhagen.

For the first time, the United States has agreed to recognize the national mitigation measures proposed by the developing countries in the proposed climate treaty.

This impressive footprint is Nike’s Considered Air Jordan XX3, their first basketball shoe designed using the Considered Ethos.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.

Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.

From Nike: The long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

United States (and EU) have objected to the principles of Kyoto Protocol and demand that developing countries should also accept responsibility to reduce carbon emissions by accepting mandatory emission targets.

What with the Vice President promoting the PACE model of super affordable city financing for solar; and the econo-apocalypse-related drop in solar panel prices, you’d think that solar was in the bag by now, but group buying on top of all that will still buy the cheapest solar for your roof.

For example, in the Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs and Coachella area, you could now get all your electricity free for the next 25-40 years for $10,000! That’s about $90,000 lower than you would have paid your utility for 25 years.

One Block off the Grid’s completely unique model of group buying combined with the financing of their partnering banker SunRun (which offers one of the few solar financing options to remain viable in the downturn) has made group purchasing the cheapest way for going solar ever.

The solar company 1BOG selected for this neighborhood; HelioPower is able to install that neighborhood for $5.49 a watt—the lowest rate 1BOG has ever negotiated for their group discount.

The normally conservative International Energy Agency is now saying that we must act faster to prevent climate change. Not only to prevent catastrophe, but also because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to achieve the greater and greater cuts that are necessary to keep worldwide temperature rise to 2 degrees Centigrade or a 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit global average.

2 C is the least we can realistically hope and aim for now. This would be less disastrous than the 4 C or the completely catastrophic 6 C (10.8 F) average worldwide temperature rise we would headed for under a business-as-usual continuation of current overall trends in carbon emissions.

Faith Birol, the IEA Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency said that the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy.

Kyoto legislation worked. The EU is on track to meet - and actually exceed the carbon emissions target it set of 8% reductions below 1990 levels by 2012, the Commission’s annual progress report on emissions shows. The EU-15 (the first fifteen signatories) will meet and exceed their initial target to get 8% below 1990 levels and 10 of the remaining 12 member states will meet and exceed their reduction goals of 6% below 1990 levels by 2012.

This contrasted with economic growth of around 44% over the same period, through 2007. Currently, as of 2009; EU-27 emissions are now estimated to be 13.6% lower than the base year level 1990.