Green Options

The last time you visited an aquarium, you probably saw one. With their zebra-like stripes, multiple spines, and elaborate fins, they’re quite beautiful and incredibly distinctive. But red lionfish are also voracious carnivores that breed like rabbits and are poisonous to boot. And they’re invading the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

According to a new report released by the Interior Department, shallow-water offshore wind farms could supply as much as 20% of the electricity in most coastal states. The report, released last week by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said that the greatest offshore wind energy potential in the U.S. lies off the Atlantic Coast.

The NAACP has joined with environmental groups to oppose the construction of three power plants because of concerns that burning the feces will expose poor people to arsenic and other contaminants.

“Everyone wants jobs, but you have to be against a job that on the back end may bring disease,” said William Barber II, president of the state NAACP. “I guarantee you if they attempted to put it in a suburban community or a higher-income area, it would be an all-out fight against it.”

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom reported for us that the city had just installed 3 charging stations for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Yesterday, the News & Observer reported that Raleigh, N.C. plans to install eight plug-in charging stations over the next few months, under a program called Project Get Ready.

Like the San Francisco-based program, drivers will access the charging stations through key-cards. In Raleigh, this means simple credit card access at a cost of about 2.5 cents per mile, while the SF-based program uses chargers provided by Coulomb Technologies at no cost, but are only available to members of the car-sharing programs City CarShare and Zipcar.

By now, we’ve all heard about the environmental and social costs of large-scale coffee farming: lost biodiversity, unfairly reimbursed farmers, pesticide pollution and more. Another downside, though, might be less familiar: ecosystem damage caused by coffee-processing wastewater.

According to the EPA, “The wastewater produced from the wet-processing of coffee places a heavy burden on the local ecosystems. Currently, there are few environmentally sound measures that monitor the discharge of this effluent. It is often discarded in a manner that disrupts both streams and the local water supplies.”

What’s the solution? A team of students at Appalachian State University, located in Boone, North Carolina, think they might have the answer. You might call it (as the EPA has) “fair-trade ethanol.”

[a child in rural Pucallpa, Peru; Creative Commons photo by sdpuckett]

What started as a dinnertime conversation could revolutionize disaster relief. Chuck Cooper and his friend Jim Shamp were chatting about a neighbor’s free-standing home photovoltaic system. What if, they wondered, you built something like this on a truck that could help out areas in need to electricity? Cooper, a North Carolina environmental entrepreneur, took that idea and ran with it.

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For two weeks in the end of September, there was no gas to be found in the county surrounding Asheville, North Carolina and most of the gas stations remained closed.

The recent hurricanes are being blamed for shutting down the nation’s gas supply by up to 22%. But the problem remained far worse in this region of North Carolina.

Even over a week after the main pipeline to the East Coast, the Colonial pipeline, had reopened, gas remained scarce and there were few answers as to why.

On Thursday, Charlotte based utility company Duke Energy unveiled plans for a pilot program that will test whether or not 850 North Carolina homes can collectively produce the energy of a small solar power plant. While the panels will only be placed on 850 roofs, it is estimated that they will actually produce 16 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power 2600 homes.

Duke Energy has a few small obstacles to get past before it can move forward with its plan. The company is offering 100 million dollars to any company that can supply the necessary materials, panels, and labor for the project. They hope to get started in early 2009. In addition to finding a supplier, they must also gain the approval of the North Carolina Utilities Commission. It seems likely though that they will obtain approval in the next few months, given the considerable amount of public interest in clean energy projects.

Barack Obama is the U.S.’s best hope for developing a clean-energy future, according to a new group formed to promote and raise funds for the Democratic presidential nominee.

Cleantech & Green Business Leaders for Obama (Cleantech for Obama, or CT4O) kicked off its campaign in San Francisco this week. The organization plans to hold fund-raising events across the country to collect at least $1 million to support Obama’s campaign.

Some of the group’s coming events include a Sept. 7 “Barbecue for Barack” in Durham, North Carolina, and an Oct. 11 “Baracktoberfest” in San Francisco.

In a recent post, my colleague Jennifer Lance asked whether Hillary Clinton can take on big oil. Among other things, Jennifer concluded that despite the good intentions of Senator Clinton,”A gas tax holiday will not solve the problem of peak oil.” And that is exactly the same message the Obama campaign wants to deliver in an ad now running in North Carolina ahead of next Tuesday’s primary.

The commercial denounces the proposed gas-tax cut, a proposal which Senators Clinton [...]

The News & Observer reports that software company SAS is investigating whether to build a solar energy farm at the firm’s headquarters in Cary, North Carolina.

The proposed installation would be able to generate 1 megawatt of electricity, nearly 10 times as much as the next-largest solar farm in the state. That facility, located at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, produces about 105 kilowatts of electricity.