Green Options

While we selected one of the best-selling residential wind turbines in the US, a 10kW (kilowatt) rated machine built in Norman, Oklahoma by Bergey Windpower Co., there’s still wear and tear common among any machines, especially those that have to stand up to the increasingly severe storms and harsh four seasons in Wisconsin. Now the nation’s leading small wind turbine manufacturer with installations in all fifty states and 100 countries, Bergey Windpower Co. manufactured our entire 10kW Bergey GridTek system that includes our generator and inverter system components.  But parts still wear out; items need replacing.

We installed our grid-tied 10kW Bergey Excel in May, 2003, and — other than a blade switch-out in 2005 to boost production (which it did by more than 30 percent) — we’ve encountered no mechanical or electronic failures or issues. It’s a testament to how reliable some of the wind turbines and inverters have become. Since its installation, we’ve already generated over 48,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) of renewable energy, presently averaging about 10,000 kWhs/year. Yep, our utility, Alliant Energy, then buys our surplus electricity back from us (it amounts to about $400 a year). According to calculations at Bergey Windpower Co., our 10 kW Bergey GridTek system will offset approximately 1.2 tons of air pollutants and 250 tons of greenhouse gases over its 30-year operating life.

This past September, we hired Kettle View Renewable Energy LLC to complete the replacement of leading-edge tape on each of the blades, tape which was pealing back or slid off altogether. The leading-edge tape helps protect the perfectly balanced fiber reinforced plastic blades — offering about twice the strength of low carbon steel. These Bergey Excel blades have a swept area diameter of 23 feet. Kettle View Renewable Energy, LLC is one of the hundreds of new companies that have started to meet the growing need of servicing renewable energy systems, completing renewable energy site assessments, grant writing and system installations.

Sustainablog editor Jeff McIntire Strasburg did a great series last year on Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s “move to a greener business model” and I’ve followed up recently with posts on their addition of “hybrid branches” and the expansion of the Enterprise Ridesahare program in Atlanta. Not to inundate our readers with news from one organization, but if the news is continually positive, I think we should report it! Of particular note today is the opt-in carbon offset program started last year in partnership with TerraPass.

In the year since Enterprise started the program along with sister companies Alamo and National, more than 175,000 customers have opted to pay a $1.25 premium on their rental fee, generating $220,000 to help fund certified offset programs and making it the most popular customer opt-in carbon offset program in the country. With the company’s commitment to match those contributions dollar-for-dollar up to $ 1 million, the total contribution to the various offset programs has totaled $440,000.

“We believe this is the most popular consumer opt-in offset program in the travel industry and quite possibly any industry,” said Erik Blachford, chief executive officer of TerraPass. “It’s certainly the most popular program we’ve seen, and participation continues to grow.”

These days it seems everybody has some sort of recycled/eco friendly paper offering. So what’s the big deal about a Swedish offering making it’s US debut on Earth Day this year?

White Lines factory reuses their carbon emissions in a closed loop, making for zero CO2 emissions, for one. Then they offset what they can’t reuse (transportation, etc) via planting trees in Africa, as coordinated by environmental consultancy U&W (interestingly pronounced “You & We” in Swedish) The wood used for the [...]

Scott James is a frequent contributor to Planetsave. This is his first post on the Ecopreneurist.

Hi Everyone, I want to introduce you to the Carbon Advice Group. It is an international carbon offsetting venture that allows users to create their own carbon offset merchant sites. This site harnesses the spirit of social entrepreneurship in the drive to be carbon neutral by empowering anyone to set up their own personalized micro-site where they can provide carbon offsets to their family, friends or business colleagues.

Every person and business leaves a carbon footprint, perhaps most notably through travel or food consumption, and this site empowers people to take responsible action to offset the unavoidable emissions of everyday transactions. I especially like that the affiliate set-up lets people take the carbon offset message to their personal community/network/business and take a lead role in spreading that awareness. Here is a page that I set up as an example:  Scott on Carbon Advice Group.

“We want to motivate the average person in the street to get online, build their own site and get the message across to everyone they know,” says serial Social Entrepreneur and Carbon Advice Group founder Matthew Sullivan.

If you live in a city (or even the ‘burbs) and are touched with a fiber obsession, the thought of packing it up and moving to a farm to raise your own sheep is not too often in the back of your mind. It sounds so romantic doesn’t it? Tending your own flock, shearing and preparing the fiber for spinning. Spinning, then dying the yarn, then knitting with your creation, knowing everything that went into the process.

Has reality set in yet? Kids, job, partner, just doesn’t equal farm bliss. Well listen up and take heed. You can now, partially, live out your dream of running away to tend sheep with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share from Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm.

With a share in the Farm you buy into the Farm and have a stake in its success. The goal is to have yarn or bats for spinning at the end of the process, but you get so much more. You have access to Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm’s blog, where there are updates on the farm’s goings on. A weekly email update, invites to shearing parties and a chance to visit the farm and help out. This is after all, part your farm!

Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities white, it would offset the entire planet’s carbon dioxide emissions for one year. That’s nearly 44 metric gigatons.

It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.

Worldchanging magazine has announced that it is selling the ultimate environmentalist gift for high school and college graduates: carbon offsets for life.

This means that for every donation above a certain level, Worldchanging will buy carbon offsets in the name of the graduate.

But the price of this gift is not cheap—the minimum donation is $6,000 to offset a graduate’s childhood, and the max is $25,000 to offset an entire career. It also raises an important question: what will such a present do to the mindset of the recipient?

Paso del Istmo is a 20 kilometer-long land bridge in Nicaragua. Conservationists believe that the narrow strip of tropical forest could absorb some 170,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. What’s more, carbon offsets might make these forests worth more as trees than as lumber.

For millennia, the land bridge has been a corridor allowing animal migration between North and South America. It now has some of the most highly concentrated biodiversity in Nicaragua. Conservation group, Paso Pacifico, wishes to permanently protect the land bridge from developers, but where could they find funding to make this dream a reality?

Enter the carbon offset company, CarbonFund. In league with Paso Pacifico and the Rainforest Alliance, carbon offsets offer the funding to make conservation of the Paso del Istmo land bridge a reality; and they’re not stopping at just conservation.

Last month was a busy time for the voluntary carbon standard (VCS). Admittedly, it’s not a phrase that rolls smoothly off the tongue.

Like corporate social responsibility (CSR), you find yourself semi-exhausted before the next sentence.

You sense inherent good in each of these phrases – sure – but just want them to make sense in a realer world.

And so to the VCS.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is big business. In 2006, there was a huge surge in this market resulting in a 200% growth.

Big brands were, and are, getting into carbon offsetting in a big way. Google, Nike, Coca Cola, Yahoo! – all are now part of this market.

I don’t think it at all beneficial at this stage to analyse their reasons for announcing green credentials. Whether it really is genuine CSR or in each case a PR exercise is redundant. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re doing it.

So, yes, multinationals are offsetting their carbon within the voluntary sector. Good.

But what’s drawing them to the market? Two reasons.

This weekend at the Sasquatch! Music Festival in Washington, you can hear the likes of Bjork, The Arcade Fire, Manu Chao and the Beastie Boys. And if you listen closely, you might also hear the sigh of atmospheric relief as Carbon Harmony neutralizes the effects of all carbon dioxide emmissions resulting from this year’s Sasquatch!

You may remember from my previous post that the United States produced at least

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Universal Pictures has teamed up with The Conservation Fund to create the Almighty Forest, a virtual carbon offset portal at GetOnBoardNow.com.

The site was launched in conjunction with the upcoming release of Universal's new comedy, Evan Almighty. The domain name, GetOnBoardNow.com is in reference to the movie in which Evan (Steve Carrell) is called upon by God (Morgan Freeman) to build an ark to save the world from an impending flood (check out the

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