The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
A growing need to recycle millions of tires discarded annually is the impetus for the continued development of a proposed new ASTM International specification that provides standards for converting tires into an asphalt product.
WK20240, Specification for Performance Graded Tire Rubber-Modified Asphalt Binder is being developed by Subcommittee D04.40 on Asphalt Specifications, under the jurisdiction of ASTM International Committee D04 on Road and Paving Materials.
Read the full story at News.com.
Fuel producer Poet said on Wednesday that it will open an ethanol plant next year that will use corn cobs and fiber from kernels as a feedstock.
Construction on the $4 million pilot facility in Scotland, S.D., will begin by the end of the year and produce 20,000 gallons of ethanol per year.
A full-color, graphic version of this newsletter is available online at:
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/enewsletter
Last Swath of Fort Ord is Turned Over to Local Group for a $100M Privatized Cleanup
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/13/last-swath-fort-ord-turned-over-local-group-a-100m-privatized-toxic-cleanup
By Leslie Guevarra
A 3,300-acre Superfund site at the once vast Fort Ord in Monterey County has moved from federal hands to a group of local authorities that will oversee a $100 million environmental cleanup funded by the U.S. Army and will set the stage for redevelopment.
Box of Rain: States Take a Closer Look at Rainwater Harvesting
By Jeff Kray
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/column/2008/08/14/box-rain-rainwater-harvesting
Regulators have historically tended to look the other way when it comes to water captured as rain. But as water becomes more scarce, regulators are more closely scrutinizing the increasingly popular practice of
rainwater harvesting — collecting rainwater in barrels, buckets and tanks.
National Labs Help DOE Strive for Zero-Net Energy Commercial Buildings
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/06/national-labs-help-doe-strive-zero-net-energy-commercial-buildings
By Leslie Guevarra
With guidance from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), five national laboratories are banding together to help speed development of marketable zero-net energy commercial buildings.
‘The Dollars and Sense of Green Retrofits
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/01/the-dollar-and-sense-green-retrofits
Companies that pass up a chance to green their existing commercial buildings may never recover from the losses resulting from greater operating costs, lower productivity, negative brand image and declining attractiveness to workers, according to a recent study.
Johnson Controls Helps Green Olympic Venues
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/05/johnson-controls-helps-green-olympics
Johnson Controls’ green building and efficiency solutions are up and running at 18 Olympic stadiums and supporting facilities, the firm said.
Waste Drywall Finds New Life As Gypsum Products
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/05/waste-drywall-finds-new-life-as-gypsum-products
USA Gypsum has added a new product to its line of gypsum made from recycled drywall waste.
Aon Offers Green Building Insurance, Allstate Tests E-Payment, Eco-Contribution Program
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/07/aon-offers-green-commercial-building-insurance-allstate-tests-e-pay-eco-contribution
By Leslie Guevarra
The Aon Corporation is offering a green insurance option for commercial property policyholders, and Allstate Insurance Company is expanding a market test of a paperless billing and pay process that’s paired with a conservation contribution program.
EPA Provides $500,000 to Green Brownfields
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/11/epa-provides-500000-green-brownfields
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s program to help green brownfields is providing more than $500,000 in technical assistance to 16 projects nationwide.
Atco Signs Up to Help Ease Draw on NY Power Grid
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/12/atco-signs-up-help-ease-draw-ny-power-grid
Atco Properties & Management has enrolled several of its commercial buildings in the PowerPay New York demand response energy conservation program that’s aimed at reducing blackouts and brownouts in New
York State.
50 Kohl’s Stores Awarded EPA’s Energy Star
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/04/50-kohl%E2%80%99s-awarded-energy-star
The Kohl’s stores that earned the designation form the largest group of non-supermarket retail buildings to now bear the Energy Star
Retrofit Brings New Life to Old Industrial Park
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2008/08/01/retrofit-brings-new-life-old-industrial-park
By Leslie Guevarra
San Jose moves a step closer to its vision for a green community with the transformation of a tired former industrial property into an eco-friendly business park that was crafted according to LEED standards.
Pulpwatch.org
http://www.greenerbuildings.com/resources/resource/pulpwatchorg
Pulpwatch.org provides an interactive map of pulp and paper mills, rating them on their environmental and social performance.
The Dollars and Sense of Green Retrofits
http://www.greenbiz.com/resources/resource/the-dollars-and-sense-green-retrofits
This study looks at why some organizations green an old structure instead of building a new one.
Read the full story in The Scientist.
The green carpet was rolled out on August 4 for the first-ever Ecological Society of America (ESA) Student Ecofilm Festival, part of the ESA’s annual meeting in Milwaukee, WI. There was no popcorn in sight, but there was plenty of beer and chips to go around — this is a city founded on brewing, after all.
The Ecofilm Festival was the brainchild of Alan Covich, an ecologist at the University of Georgia and former ESA president. Covich devised the event as a way for students to engage in educational outreach. Young ecologists cum filmmakers were invited to submit 5-7 minute short movies in one of three categories: “methods in ecology,” “pure nature,” and “humans and the environment.” A panel of eight judges — seven ESA members together with the EarthDance Environmental Film Festival’s founding director Zakary Zide — then chose the best film in each category. The winners received a free registration to the meeting, worth $150.
While researching something else this morning, I discovered that it’s been 30 years since Love Canal, NY was evacuated and declared a Federal disaster area. Around the first of the month, there was some coverage by the Associated Press and other media outlets. Here’s a sample:
- Scars linger in Love Canal - and former residents — Associated Press, August 1, 2008
- The lessons of Love Canal lost unless Superfund is fixed — New York Daily News, August 7, 2008. Opinion piece by Lois Marie Gibbs, one of the Love Canal residents who spearheaded the community effort to get the state and federal governments to do something about the problem.
- On Love Canal Anniversary, Regional Institute Looks at WNY’s Environmental Burden — University of Buffalo Regional Institute, August 6, 2008. News release announcing the publication of a policy brief entitled Thirty Years from Love Canal that looks at the effect the disaster has had on environmental policy and public awareness.
For some historical perspective, see:
- The Long History of a Toxic-Waste Nightmare, a timeline published by the New York Times on the tenth anniversary in 1988.
- The Love Canal Tragedy — EPA Journal, January 1979. Piece by Eckardt C. Beck, who was U.S. EPA Region 2 administrator from 1977-1979.
- The Love Canal Collections, an online archive of documents and press clippings from the University of Buffalo Library.
Read the full story in Environmental Science and Technology.
A new study of more than 1000 Maryland streams finds that as climate patterns change, urban sprawl can pollute water with more nitrate than previously thought.
Read the full post at Green Car Congress.
Among the projects of Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Technology R&D Center is the development of the “omnivorous engine“. The project seeks to combine in-cylinder measurement technology and advanced controls to optimize spark timing, the quantity, and the timing of injected fuel to produce an engine that will be able to run on any liquid spark ignition fuel with optimal efficiency and low emissions.
Read the full story at Biopact.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) introduces a new database on the world’s soils which improves knowledge of the current and future land productivity as well as the present carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential of the world’s soils. It helps to identify land and water limitations, and assist in assessing the risks of land degradation, particularly soil erosion risks.
Read the full story at Seacoastonline.com.
It all begins one municipality, one school district at a time.
That’s the theory behind Green Start, a new statewide nonprofit organization based in Portsmouth that is working to make biodiesel for vehicles so commonplace in New Hampshire that it will be found at the local gas station.
Read the full story in the Dallas Morning News.
John Oldner drives his diesel truck daily, but he hasn’t stopped at a commercial service station in more than a year.
He powers his pickup with used cooking oil that is processed into biodiesel fuel. He pays $2.55 a gallon – about half what others shell out for diesel.
Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.
With his blue button-down shirt, neat khaki pants and rimless glasses, Mike Lewis doesn’t look like much of an evangelist.
But that’s what he is: an advocate for alternative fuels — and their profit-pumping potential.
Lewis is co-owner of Pearson Fuels, a gas station on El Cajon Boulevard just east of Interstate 15 that sells biodiesel, two kinds of natural gas, vehicle-grade propane and ethanol alongside the usual pumps for gasoline and diesel. Pearson also has six bays for charging electric cars, but they have been little used since 2004, after major automakers pulled the plug on electric vehicles.
Read the full story in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.
Standing atop the four-story hospital, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by power-soaking crystalline silicon panels, Larry Barrett said it felt good to be first.
Read the full story in the Tallahassee Democrat.
Last Thursday’s editorial (”Greening TMH: Hospital promotes healthy environment, business”) missed an opportunity to reveal changes being made by the health-care industry related to environmental sensitivity. The focus was only on TMH. Based on actions set in place for months and even years, Capital Regional Medical Center could be considered the leader in going “green” in our health-care community.
Via DOE Pulse. A longer description of the research is available in a press release.
Researchers at DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory are studying the co-gasification process in which various types of coal and biomass are combined and converted into synthesis gas for use in producing electricity, hydrogen, chemicals and liquid transportation fuels. The biomass includes energy crops such as wheat straw, corn stover, switchgrass, mixed hardwood and distillers’ dried grains with corn fiber, and even algae. Using coal in co-gasification provides a steady supply that can be supplemented by biomass whenever available. The researchers are examining how best to couple the coals and biomasses that makes sense geographically. They are using a small-scale gasification system to evaluate various products.
Read the full story in Sustainable Industries Journal.
What goes around, comes around, when the wind blows. An investment made in 2004 on what was then a relatively unknown technology and company is now beginning to pay off for an Oregon tribe. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) earlier this month received the first installment of pay backs on an investment they made with Vancouver, Wash.-based Columbia Energy Partners on the Rattlesnake Road wind farm in 2004. According to Columbia Energy Partners, the company delivered a check for $125,000 to the tribe in July.
Read the full story in Sustainable Industries Journal.
During the 1980s, East Coast cities efforts to deal with trash could have been a comedy of errors if they weren’t such a serious problem. In one story still told in waste management circles today, a barge filled with more than 3,000 tons of trash sailed between New York City and Belize for more than six months while city officials tried to find a landfill to take the waste.
Things are different now. Although the amount of waste the United States generates each day rose by about one pound per person between 1980 and 2006, increased recycling and recover rates meant the amount headed to landfills decreased by about a pound as well. Still, 138.2 million tons of waste are sent to the nation’s 1,754 operating landfills annually. Seattle alone sends a mile-long train filled with garbage to Oregon every day.
On the West Coast, there’s an estimated1.5 million tons of capacity left in the region’s landfills, which currently accept 64 million tons of waste annually. That’s enough to last about 24 years.
However, landfill operators are now finding new ways to increase landfill capacity — and also limit environmentally and financially costly problems after a landfill is closed — by turning to waste-to-energy technologies that have finally come of age.
Read the full story in Discover Magazine.
In the central North Pacific, plastic outweighs surface zooplankton 6 to 1.
Read the full story in Discover Magazine.
While many cattle are stuffed full of grain, grass-fed cattle have been heralded as a greener way to get beef because it diminishes the need to feed the animals antibiotics and has a smaller carbon footprint, not to mention that it yields beef with less saturated fat. Those of us lucky (or wealthy) enough to feast on grass-fed beef can rest easy knowing we have taken a step toward protecting planet Earth — or so we thought. It turns out there’s a hitch: Cow burps, which send methane into the atmosphere, may increase global warming.
Tessa's mom, environmental librarian, House Rabbit Society volunteer, PTA/school mom, avid reader.
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