I’ve come up with a top ten list of lifestyle factors that I believe have the biggest impact on whether or not we are living sustainable lives. Is your lifestyle sustainable?

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9. Top 10 in Green You Should Follow on Twitter By Maryanne Conlin Milker–posted on Ecopreneurist, February 3rd, 2009

8. My Top Ten Quick, Healthy, Sustainable Snacks by Megan Prusynski–posted on Eat. Drink. Better., June 13th, 2008

7. The top ten office environmental pet peeves and why Xerox went green By Olga Orda–posted on Green Options, July 16, 2008

6. Top 10 Electric Cars Coming to the US in 2009/2010 By Nick Chambers–posted on Gas 2.0, January 15, 2009

5. Ten Ways to Eat Local, Seasonal Food All Year By Bryan Luukinen–posted on Eat. Drink. Better., September 29th, 2008

4. Clean Energy Intro: Top 10 Alternative Solar Uses By Michelle Bennett–posted on Cleantechnica, February 25th, 2008

3. The Nature Conservancy: Top 10 Ways to Help Save Our Oceans By Jonathon D. Colman–posted on Green Options, June 21, 2008

2. Top Ten Water Saving Tips By me–posted on PlanetSave, October 22, 2008

1. Ten Winning Ideas for Change By Becky Striepe–posted on Ecolocalizer, January 17th, 2009

Ten takeaways from this post: conserve water, buy local, drive a green car (if you have to drive at all), eat well, stay informed, stay active, be the change you wish to see, use renewable energy, consume less, and of course, read Green Options Media (which itself has been mentioned in a few lists, such as Environmental Graffiti’s “Top Ten Environmental Blogs“, Webecoist’s “25 of the Greenest Blogs“, and Read Write Web’s “Top 35 Environmental Blogs“)

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GM is backing a hydrogen refueling station near Los Angeles. The station will be located at Clean Energy’s compressed natural gas (CNG) facility and should be operational by the fall (gas 2.0).

U.S. Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) will introduce a national renewable energy feed-in tariff. Under the bill, utilities would be required to pay a set price to anyone supplying less than 20MW of renewable electricity to the grid. Inslee plans to introduce the bill in the next week or two. But requiring utilities to pay a mandated amount for renewable energy is “a new idea to D.C., and like a fine wine it’ll need time” (ecopolitology).

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The two largest pension funds in the US, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, with some $246.7 billion under its management, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, $168.8 billion strong, were both on board with the institutional investor coalition. These two large and incredibly wealthy pension funds tend to be leaders in the institutional investor arena. George McPherson, senior managing director of the DC-based private equity firm Global Environment Fund said he expects other pension funds to create more programs geared towards clean technology over the next year.

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So far the company reports that it has recycled over 3,000 pounds of incandescent holiday lights which it received from several hundred participants. Anyone who is looking for some place to send their old Christmas lights to die can mail them to HolidayLEDs.com for recycling.

And because I know it will be asked, the lights are sent to a independent recycling company which chops the lights into little tiny pieces using a commercial shredder. The various components (copper, PVC, glass, etc.) are separated and then processed. The lead is extracted from the PVC and shipped to Chinese toy manufacturers who use it to make paint for toys for children. I’m kidding. But I did read a report about a “recycling” company that was actually shipping the old light strings to China where the insulation was manually removed and the copper was extracted for smelting…not sure that this is a net gain.

Today, we rolled out the newest member of the Green Options Media blog network, CleanTechnica. Both lead writer Sarah Lozanova, and our publisher, David Anderson, “baptized” our new clean technology blog by sharing what they learned on a tour of Coskata’s facility in the Chicago suburbs. Team member Michelle Bennett also dug into a topic we’ll cover frequently there: solar panels (specifically, cheap and free ones).

While there may be a little bit of topical overlap between these two blogs, we’ll tend to keep alternative fuels developments here at Gas 2.0, while other clean tech stories will appear at CleanTechnica. We hope you’ll make both blogs a part of your daily reading, and that you’ll let us know how we’re doing on both.

Using solar or other renewable energies to produce hydrogen is not a new idea, but making it work has been difficult. With solar energy the trick has been to create stable electrodes that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The problem? Creating an electrode stable enough to do the job has presented a formidable hurtle. Nanoptek has apparently cleared the jump. Michael Kanellos from CNet News explains it well:

Other companies have tried to use titania electrodes for this job in the past, but they broke down relatively rapidly, according to Nanoptek. The company’s electrodes work better because, ironically, they are more brittle. The crystal lattice in the electrode is stressed, i.e. additional materials are added. (Semiconductor makers similarly stress their chips with germanium to create strained silicon, which improves performance.)

This technology is still in experimental stages, but Nanoptek is nevertheless collecting investments and research funding to bring it off the drawing table. The company website suggests several potential markets for their future product. Their stand-alone system could provide clean energy and water for developing communities, home fuel production for hydrogen cars, back-up power for hospitals, businesses, or cell towers, and of course support for manufacturers or the larger energy grid.

Of course this is no utopian vision of clean energy for all. The solar system requires square footage to generate enough energy to produce the hydrogen. The company claims a “rooftop area of about 50 ft by 50 ft would supply enough hydrogen for the driving needs of an average family of 4.” That’s not a terribly small amount of space if you live in say, and apartment building or a small home. There is also the issue of cost, which the company does not seem ready to approach yet. The environmentalist in me would also want to know about the production process and weigh the benefits.

This is still a step in the right direction. Who knows? A few decades from now we could all enjoy clean hydrogen cars or power our air conditioners and appliances with hydrogen. We could generate our own drinking water or even recycle our gray water back into the system. Image a day when releasing water vapor via car emissions starts to effect the environment? Well, maybe not. But this technology certainly opens some important doors towards a much-anticipated green technology.

(for more info visit CNet news and Nanoptek.com)

(image courtesy of Nanoptek.com)

For some background on the very contentious Cape Wind saga:

1. On The Daily Show
2. Polling data showing support for cape wind
3. Sneaky Wind Politics
   
4. Cape Wind Opponent to Step Down

“As greater awareness of global climate change emerges, each professional involved in planning, designing, managing or governing Florida communities has an obligation to know the facts and potential solutions to this grave threat,” says Rick Hall, chairman of CNU’s Florida chapter.

The Florida chapter meeting, scheduled to be held Jan. 24 and 25 at Rollins College in Winter Park, is aimed at highlighting the message that “New Urbanism is the convenient solution to the inconvenient truth.”

Among those expecting to attend the statewide gathering are Anthony Wayne King of the Carbon-Climate Simulation Science Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who will discuss global climate change; Stephen Adams, lead staff member for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s Interim Climate and Energy Action Plan; and Lizz Plater-Zyberk, dean at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

The concept of New Urbanism holds that “walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods (are) the building blocks of sustainable communities and regions,” according to the national Congress for the New Urbanism.

Image courtesy of the Congress for the New Urbanism, taken by Michael E. Arth

December 28th, 2007 by Jim Gunshinan

Broke Your CFL? Don’t Panic!

The typical dose of mercury in a CFL is about the sizeof a pen tip 

(circled in red), and these doses have been getting smaller and smaller. 

(Photo provided by EPA.)

Australia has already begun to phase out the incandescent light bulb,

and the energy legislation recently signed by President Bush has

begun that process in the United States. Every time I turnaround,

it seems, someone is handing me a brand new

compact fluorescent light (CFL) to advance the cause of energy

efficiency and help save the planet. CFLs are becoming ubiquitous

in households all over California. We taught them in the pages of

Home Energy all the time. And that’s a goodthing, right?

Brandy Bridges, of Ellsworth, Maine may not think so. A cleaning

company quoted her a price of $2,000 to clean her house after

she broke a CFL.The benefits of CFLs are many–they use about75%

less energy than incandescents and last up to ten times longer.

Replacing a 75W incandescent with an 18W CFL will save you about $46

in electricity costs over the life of the bulb, and thatis at current

electricity prices, which no doubt will go up, making today’s CFLs an

even better deal. Energy Star CFLs (www.energystar.gov/cfls) won’t

flicker, give warmer light, and there area variety of them, from

the ubiquitous A-line bulb, to candelabras.

But, and it’s a big but, CFLs won’t give light without mercury.

The average CFL on the shelf at your local hardware store has about

4 mg of mercury in it. Mercury vapor is harmful to humans,and there

is enough mercury accumulated in some of the fish we eat

to make this Californian think twice about ordering salmon for dinner.

Thankfully, there are ways to clean up a broken CFL thatdon’t involve

an overly frightened and/or greedy cleaning company

(www.epa.gov/CFLcleanup), and recycling centers are available, if not

yet ubiquitous (that word again!) (www.lamprecycle.org).

Even if the worst happens and you break a CFL bulb, the EPA estimates

that at most only 6.8% of the 4 mg of mercury will be released, or about

0.27 mg, since most of it is in the glass, electrodes, and in the phosphor

coating on the inside of the glass. Incinerating a bulb willpotentially

release more mercury vapor, if there are no pollution controls on the incinerator.

But even if the CFL released all of it’s mercury–according to Richard Benware,

a graduate student at Cornell who researched CFLs last summer for EPA’s

Energy Star program–it would still be a better choice than an incandescent,

because over its lifetime, the 15W CFL will have preventedthe release of 5.67 mg

of mercury from an average power plant.

Of course, recycling is best, and that is still a problem. Alan Meier,

Home Energy’s senior executive editor, admits to turning

part of his garage into a “temporary hazardous waste holding facility” to

hold his family’s used CFLs, since the nearest CFL recycling center is

13 miles away from his home in Berkeley, through “one of the worst traffic

jams in the United States.” There is help in finding those recycling centers,

near and far (www.earth911.org).

But we need to put the same effort used in making CFLs ubiquitous into making

disposing of them in a clean safe manner just as ubiquitously easy.

You know what I mean.

The version of the farm bill passed by the Senate on Friday contains a small wind tax provision - the first in more than 20 years. The provision is a 30% investment tax credit (up to $4,000) for the installation of small wind systems. The credit is available for farmers, small businesses and homeowners for new wind systems up to 10 kw. This may be another piece of evidence of a farm bill in energy bill’s clothing.

The tax-credit has remained a part of the farm bill despite an attempt to scuttle it. Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) and others defeated an amendment sponsored by Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that would have limited the small wind investment tax credit to farmers and small businesses, thus excluding owners of rural residential property and commercial property suitable for small wind from taking advantage of what has traditionally been viewed as a burden. It comes as no surprise to see Sen. Alexander championing the anti-wind cause once again. The Senator from Tennessee has been surprisingly outspoken about wind energy policy in the U.S., even going as far as suggesting that it ruins mountaintops (to say nothing of the practice of ‘mountaintop removal’ in TN and other coal-heavy states). It is also interesting to note that Alexander owns property on Nantucket Island in MA, not far at all from the proposed Cape Wind project and that he has been a vocal opponent and unlikely ally of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Coincidence?! I think not.

I suppose I shouldn’t be trumpeting this small victory too loudly, President Bush hasn’t signed the bill into law yet, so I suppose there is also a chance that the small tax credit will get axed from the bill just like all of the other renewable energy legislation.

The Environmentalist 12 Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Twelve trees a-planted
Eleven CFL’s shining
Ten Fair-Trade chocolates
Nine PV panels lighting
Eight manatees a-swimming
Seven acres protecting
Six chimps a-swinging
Five No Conflict Diamonds

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Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Kansas, Wisconsin, and the Canadian province of Manitoba all signed onto the agreement at the Midwestern Governor’s Association (MGA) Energy Summit that was held in Milwaukee, WI earlier this month. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle (D) and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) co-chaired the summit. The governors of Indiana, Ohio, and South Dakota signed on as observers to the process but did not commit to the accord.

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The first innovative step towards stacking cars was the parking structure, where layers of cars could be stacked upon each other. The next innovative step is to actually stack cars up against each other to reduce the absurd amount of space we require for vehicular parking. The concept is a hybrid of car sharing systems, spatial planning, alternative fueling systems, and personal convenience.

Developed by MIT Media Lab students from the Concept Car Design Workshop sponsored by GM, the key behind this concept is the redesign of the wheel and axel. Rather than having a rigid axel, it will actually fold in a way that will allow the car to rotate upwards 90 degrees. In this, the long dimension of the vehicle is perpendicular to the ground while parked. Since each car has the same form and design, they perfectly nest together to reduce surface space consumption. The stackable car will be able to reduce required curbside parking space by about a third to a half. This allows for more sidewalk space, biking lanes, and comfortable city conditions.

Due to the small dimensions, the stacks of cars will be conveniently placed in locations all over the city- where you would normally come out of a building and hail a cab; you can jump in an electric city car and advance to your next desired location. The concept City Car system includes solar paneling on the rooftops of buildings adjacent to the stackable parking depositories. These panels will be the power supply to charge the electric cars while parked.

This car-sharing concept is a solution to the missing link between public transportation and the front door. Often people don’t use public transit due to the time necessary to switch from the subway to the bus to the next bus. Now people can commute into the city, get off the train, jump in a city car, and drive that extra three to ten miles to the office. This is a reasonable solution to a very prevalent problem. Instead of unnecessarily consuming a parking space while in the office all day long, you can use a city car in the morning and evening, while others use it all afternoon; and the convenience of hopping in a city car is what will make this work. In addition, since these cars aren’t personal vehicles and people will be in them on an average of five to thirty minutes, hopefully the new system will encourage people to share rides across town thus influencing our sense of community, status, and ownership.

If such measures are put in place, the U.S. could see as many as one out of every four workers employed by a renewable-energy or energy-efficiency industry by 2030, according to a new report from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). That’s promising for both U.S. employees and for anyone concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels. But it will happen only, as the ASES report says, under “an aggressive deployment forecast scenario.”

That means we, as citizens and consumers, are going to have to apply strong and steady pressure on legislators — local, state and national — to do the right thing. And that, we all know, isn’t easy.

Still, if — as the saying goes — money walks, green-collar types might see Beltway support grow as green industries expand their economic muscle, which means more dollars for lobbying and campaign financing. And, in that regard, the future looks bright.

In the U.S., renewable-energy and energy-efficiency industries are already generating 8.5 million jobs and nearly $970 billion in annual revenues, according to the ASES report. “To put this in perspective,” the report states, “(t)otal sales for Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil and General Motors in 2006 were $905 billion.”

While companies on the energy-efficiency side — things like better windows, efficient appliances and insulation — are making more of the money right now, the renewables side is growing more rapidly.

The ASES predicts the hottest, fastest-growing industries will involve solar power, wind energy, ethanol and fuel-cell technologies. With the right level of public support, it says, we could see up to 40 million people employed — as everything from accountants and biochemists to engineers, mechanics and truck drivers — in the renewable-energy and energy-efficiency sectors by 2030, with annual green-industry revenues of $4.5 trillion.

Getting there, though, will require much more than a business-as-usual approach, the ASES report warns.

“This scenario requires appropriate, aggressive, sustained public policies at the federal and state level during next two decades,” it states. Getting decision-makers to come on board might take oil shortages, fossil-fuel price increases, growing security concerns or a greater awareness of the impact of climate change. The fear of suffering economically at a global level might also be a motivator.

“If we fail to invest in (renewable energy and energy efficiency), the United States runs the risk of losing ground to international … programs and industries,” the report concludes. “For the United States to be competitive in a carbon-constrained world, the (renewable energy and energy efficiency) industry will be a critical economic driver.”

Last week I attended a sold-out conference in downtown Denver that addressed the future of Colorado’s ‘New Energy Economy.’ In the absence of any substantial federal legislation to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, state-level government initiatives in such states as California, Vermont, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Colorado to name a few, are giving shape to a technological ‘race to the top’ scenario where states are competing with each other to attract the type of businesses that can spur the development of a regional new energy economy.

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We also consume a great amount of energy. This is partly because this is one of the darkest times of year but its also because people are using more electricity to light up their homes with holiday decorations. Incandescent Christmas lights are inefficient and won’t last very long. They also break very easily. LED technology has found its way into the world of Christmas lights and is much more efficient. Specifically, LED Christmas lights use about 90% less energy than standard incandescent lights and will last for more than 50,000 hours. The bulbs are also covered with a durable epoxy plastic so they won’t break.

This year pay attention to you consumption during the holidays and do what you can to reduce your energy consumption.

Dr Adam Best, project leader and employee of the CSIRO Energy Technology Division “predicts that the first power shirts - or flexible energy devices- could be developed within five years,” states a Sydney Morning Herald report. Their concept includes the technology of piezoelectrics as the energy generating material. This popularly researched material produces a charge displacement when it is flexed. It naturally occurs in soft chrystalline structures like quartz, and Rochelle salts.

The idea is to develop a fabric woven with piezoelectric material so that any movement on, in, or around your body would stimulate the fiber to generate power. The clothing would be woven with flexible batteries that could act as storage unit series for your devices. The next step is to figure out how to wirelessly transmit that power collected in your t-shirt to your mobile phone without damaging your body due to intense exposure to electro-magnetic fields.

Dr. Best believes that the development of this concept could revolutionize the form and usage of daily appliances. “With printable flexible circuit boards, the day may not be far off when people could make phone calls simply by talking into their collars.”

Interestingly, defense programs and departments are commonly funding projects that develop the potential for remote electrical energy generation. The Australian Defense Department sees this as an opportunity to power “back-to-base” medical monitoring equipment, radios, and other such powered devices used in the field. As it could revolutionize battle in the field, it could also serve as a highly effective tool in field research and remote backpacking trips to power gps devices, emergency radios, data recording and transmittance devices…

There are many similar ideas out there along the lines of energy generating wearables. A collaboration team with members from Michigan Technological University, Arizona State, and NanoSonic, Inc., is developing a backpack with piezoelectric fibers integrated into the straps. Alberto Villarreal, a young San Francisco-based designer, has gained recognition for a concept shoe that harnesses electricity from your step. With the development of these concepts into real products we could be actively moving towards an energy revolution.