The August 11 edition of BusinessWeek reports that despite China’s pollution and other ecological problems, the country is determined to be a green leader. The incredible images above come from National Geographic - Wallpaper.
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“We have only three options: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We will have to do all three.” Strong words from Harvard professor John P. Holdren in a BusinessWeek article titled Battening Down the Hatches.
But what exactly is mitigation, adaptation, and suffering? According to the article mitigation is the part of being ‘green’ that we are all familiar with. It’s driving less, recycling or using compact fluorescent light bulbs. It’s the things you can do to lessen or mitigate the damage to the environment. Reducing one’s carbon footprint is a great example of mitigation.
What is adaptation? According to the article, adaptation is all the things we need to do now to prepare “for a world reshaped by climate change.” The City of Annapolis, Maryland is planning to spend $9 million to raise the city’s dock located on Chesapeake Bay. Florida is exploring ways to protect 1,300 miles of coastline. You know its serious when Washington starts spending money. According to the article, “Congress is considering nearly two dozen bills with provisions for funding research and helping communities cope.
What is suffering? We are all familiar with Hurricane Katrina and the expense of rebuilding. The article mentions the Alaska town of Newtok. Diminished sea ice that once protected the town is leaving it vulnerable to erosion by the sea. The Alaskan town of Shismaref is “literally being battered to the point of falling into the sea.” - excerpt from July 17, 2006 BusinessWeek article, Business On A Warmer Planet. These towns are being moved. This is suffering!
“The Asian giant is overtaking the U.S. as the world’s biggest contributor to global warming…[and] between 2000 and 2010, the increase in China’s emissions will be more than five times greater than ALL the reductions expected under the Kyoto Protocol.” - excerpt from March 24, 2008 BusinessWeek article China’s Carbon Explosion.
Matt Cheney is trying to make it easy and cheap to go green. His firm, MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA), helps companies build solar energy systems, cut their electricity bills, and lock in rates for decades-all with no money down. The San Francisco company has erected some $300 million worth of solar panels for clients ranging from Denver International Airport to Gap (GPS).
MMA’s approach brings together evergy users, builders, and financiers. Essentially, MMA is the middleman. It contracts with companies to install the solar panels, which it owns and operates. Customers then pay MMA for the power the panels generate-like a traditional utility but with cheaper rates.” - Excerpt from www.newsweek.com.
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“Algae biodiesel isn’t practical yet, but startups and giants are enthusiastically exploring the possibilities
In a world spooked by global warming and thirsty for nonpolluting fuel, lowly algae hold a potent appeal. The plants sop up large quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and produce tiny globules of fat that can be collected and turned into biodiesel fuel for trucks, cars, and trains. The oils might even be processed into aircraft fuel.
One of algae’s great virtues is that the plant has so little in common with other sources of fuel. Unlike cornfields that are harvested to produce ethanol, algae farms don’t require huge volumes of freshwater, nor do they tie up land that could be used for food crops. Algae flourish in saltwater or even wastewater and grow up to 40 times faster than other plants. Compared with current energy crops, algae have “the potential to deliver 10 or 100 times more energy per acre,” says Ron C. Pate, a technical expert at Sandia National Labs. That’s why industrial giants ranging from Chevron (CVX ) to Honeywell (HON ) to Boeing (BA ) are starting up algae business units. “In the past two years, we have changed from algae skeptics to proponents,” says Dave Daggett, Boeing’s technology leader for energy and emissions”. Excerpt from www.businessweek.com.
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“When it comes to spewing out carbon dioxide and other agents of global warming, some of the biggest offenders are mundane construction products like drywall. Serious Materials in Sunnyvale, Calif., says that manufacturing it accounts for 1% of all the energy used by U.S. industry, and thus a comparable percentage of all industrial emissions. The company will soon market a product called EcoRock that could drastically shrink drywall’s carbon footprint.
In the traditional production process, gypsom and other raw materials are combined in watery slurry that must be rolled flat and dried, guzzling energy. Serious Materials’ new recipe combines chemicals that, when mixed, react to create much of their own drying heat. The company was voted the top prospect at a recent green investment forum, and in November, it snared $50 million in venture capital. CEO Kevin Surace argues that industry must find a way to improve on traditional building products.” - Excerpt from www.businessweek.com.
—By John Carey. Edited by Adam Aston
“To see Germany’s latest cash crop, take a train across the flat plains between Hannover and Berlin or cruise the waters off the gusty North Sea coast. In both places, you can’t miss the rows of windmills marching to the horizon, quietly generating some 7% of the nation’s electricity needs- and powering an important new industry.
Thanks to smart regulation, Germany has become a global powerhouse in green energy, producing more electricity from wind than any other country. While the industry owes some of its success to German expertise in fields such as aerodynamics, the biggest boost has come from the government. The nation’s energy law guarantees operators of windmills and solar generators an above-market price for power for as long as 20 years. Other countries have similar policies, but few have applied them as consistently as Germany”. - Excerpt from http://businessweek.com/.
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“For some industries, the prospet of $3.5 billion in federal subsidies now, and double that in three years, might be a powerful incentive. But not, apparently, for the oil industry, which is seeing crude oil prices soar to record highs. Despite collecting billions for blending small amounts of ethanol with gas, oil companies seem determined to fight the spread of E85, a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gas. Congress has set a target of displacing 15% of projected annual gasoline use with alternative fuels by 2017″. - Excerpt from Businessweek Magazine.
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“Peek into any basement or garage and you’ll find them: old cans of paint left from a domestic makeover. Every year, do-it-yourselfers stash away some 66 million gallons of surplus latex. That’s not counting the tons of waste from commercial sources, including low-quality paints rejected by manufacturers, dinged cans tossed by retailers, and big barrels abandoned by contractors.
A startup hopes to shift the flow of this colorful river away from the nation’s landfills and into new plastics. Licensing technology from Rutgers University, Re-Manufacturing Technologies (RMT) has developed a process that combines waste paint with recycled plastic to produce resin pellets that companies melt and mold into various forms, from kitchen tools to electronics cases.
The RMT approach avoids landfill costs and helps meet the plastics industry’s growing demand for recycled supplies, for which prices have climbed recently. Some day, paint recyclers might even pay you a fee to return those unwanted cans in your basement”.
“Nuclear “batteries” are nothing new. Energy from a fist-size lump of plutonium has powered the Voyager spacecraft for 25 years. And tiny specks of the stuff kept pacemakers ticking for decades. Now, Hyperion Power Generation (HPG) is developing a nuclear battery capable of powering a town. The size of a hot tub, it can put out more than 25 megawatts for five years, enough to run 25,000 homes.
Building on technology developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Santa Fe (N.M.) startup’s battery runs on uranium hydride, which acts as fuel and also regulates power output, making it virtually impossible for the battery to suffer a meltdown. With no moving parts to break or corrode, HPG’s batteries can be buried in the earth for added security and safety. Their small size makes them easy to install and, later, to remove and refuel, cutting out the need to handle radioactive materials on site.
HPG plans to sell its first units to towns and industrial operations not connected to the grid. The company estimates lifetime costs for its battery will be a fraction of the price to build and run a natural gas plant with the same capacity. Backed by venture capital from Altira, HPG could have its batteries ready in six years”.
“Could a microbe from hell help slow the pace of global warming? In the simmering, corrosive muds of Hell’s Gate hot springs of Rotorua, New Zealand, researchers have discovered bacteria that devour methane, a greenhouse gas that environmentalists consider 20 times more harmful that carbon dioxide.
GNS Science, a research organization owned by the New Zealand government, says the tough new bug is the first methane-loving bacterium found to flourish in conditions as hot as 158F, with a chemical ambience similar to stomach acid. This makes it potentially easier to adapt to other hostile environments such as landfills, which leak methane as trash decomposes.
Matthew Stott, a GNS microbiologist, says the bug could also be adapted for use in other methane-venting sites, such as mines. Publishing in Nature, the researchers dubbed their superhardy discovery Methylokorus infernorum, a mix of the Latinized names for methane and the infernal place the bug was found”.
“Can fixing energy-wasting buildings stave off global instability? Former president Bill Clinton thinks so. In the biggest project his foundation has taken on since securing a supply of cheap generic AIDS drugs for third world countries, Clinton has brokered a $5 billion effort to finance the retrofit of old buildings in 16 cities around the world.
The project, which Clinton announced at a climate conference in Manhattan yesterday, creates a financing and labor pool to replace energy-hogging light fixtures, as well as install better building insulation and more efficient HVAC systems”. - Excerpt from businessweek.com
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“The U.S. population has the largest per capita environ-mental imprint in the world, with greater impact on many of the planet’s resources and ecosystems than any other nation on earth.
With just 5% of the world’s people, we’re responsible for 25% of global CO2 emissions.
Starting here at home, we need to make environmental sustainability a national priority…” - Excerpt from Businessweek.com.
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“Critics might argue that many things about the United Nations need rethinking, and that perhaps renovating its headquarters doesn’t have to be top priority. Nonetheless, the Capital Master Plan, a proposal to renovate the international organization’s monolithic Manhattan home that was first introduced in 1996, is now finally moving ahead.
The original headquarters—designed by French architect Charles Le Corbusier, along with a panel of multinational architects including Wallace Harrison of the U.S. and Howard Robertson of Britain—opened in 1952. Built for $65 million, the 39-story building now swarms with the delegates from member states and the 4,000 administrative staffers who work within the iconic Secretariat building.
All of the buildings are active year-round, and while a temporary building will be built to house the General Assembly, ripping down the main Secretariat was never, according to officials, an option”. - Excerpt from businessweek.com
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“Small companies are donating a protion of their sales to environmental groups through 1% For the Planet
Jeff Goldberg was looking for a way to tie his passion for the environment more closely to his work. After spending four years in San Diego’s biotech industry, the avid surfer and outdoorsman found an answer: bamboo. It’s the fastest-growing plant in the world, good for building, and grows naturally without requiring extra water, energy, or fertilizer. Even better, from a business perspective, the market for building with bamboo was almost nonexistent in the U.S., he says, so there was lots of opportunity. And so Cali Bamboo was born to market the plant as a sustainable resource”. - Excerpt from Businessweek.com.
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Make that a Big Mac, fries, and a quart of motor oil, please. If executives at McDonald’s (MCD) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP), better known as Sinopec, get their way, mainland consumers may be able to fill up their cars and their stomachs in the years ahead thanks to a long-term alliance clinched last year to combine fast-food outlets with gas stations.
In mid-January, McDonald’s opened up its first drive-through restaurant at a site owned by Sinopec outside of Beijing as part of the tieup the world’s biggest restaurant operator hopes will power its expansion in China. McDonald’s already has about 785 outlets up and running in China, and plans to have 1,000 restaurants selling its fabled brand of American food by the 2008 Beijing Olympics. - Excerpt from businessweek.com.
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5. Upgrade windows
No, we’re not talking about ditching XP for Vista. The cost savings for energy-efficient windows aren’t quite as dramatic as some of the other suggestions here, but Johnston says they will have the most marked affect on residents’ quality of life. Of these, the best improvement are so called low-e coatings, transparent layers of metallic oxides applied to window panes that help maintain the desired room temperature. Available in varieties for different climates, depending on if someone wants to keep the heat in or out, Johnston says they are a “noticeable change aesthetically and in your daily experience of being in your house.”
According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, there are additional ways to improve windows. Panes with multiple glazing insulate markedly better than those with only individual layers. Likewise, having two panes of glass works better than one. And even some folks savvy enough to have two panes of glass won’t know that a wider pocket of air between them is the next smart step.
As with every aspect of remodeling, when looking to improve a house’s green credibility an owner can go as far as their heart and wallet can take them. But the odds are that some low-key, low-cost additions can have a beneficial effect on your bills. - Excerpt from businessweek.com
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4. Watch your water
Homeowners who go through all the trouble of sealing their ducts won’t want to waste water either. And the energy expended in keeping water hot also drains the pocketbook. Anyone can take shorter showers or run the dishwasher less often, but there are also devices that can help. For one thing, inexpensive flow reducers can reduce a faucet or shower head’s output without sacrificing water pressure.
Less known is a device called the Metlund Hot Water D’MAND System put out by Costa Mesa (Calif.)-based Advanced Conservation Technology. The device recirculates water from the hot water pipes to ensure that bathers are never running the faucet waiting for hot water. As with so many tricks in the green arena, the savings are gradual but, Johnston says, real.
Dual flush toilets could also become more common. Available from several manufacturers, they allow users to decide flush intensity depending on their needs. Even with the amount of water expended per flush shrinking in normal toilets, Smith says families will quickly recoup their money with one of these commodes. - Excerpt from businessweek.com
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Do a blow test
Knowing how air flows through a space—and where it gets out—is crucial to making sure the least amount of energy is used to heat or cool your home. But how can a homeowner determine that? Air, after all, is invisible and rarely gusts indoors. Nor is insulation a cure-all. Randy Hansell of Portland (Ore.) nonprofit Earth Advantage says: “insulation is good but if air goes through insulation than it’s only a big filter.” One way to gain an understanding of this tricky problem is through a blower door test.
To perform the test, someone mounts a strong fan called a blower door on a frame of an exterior door. When the fan gets turned on it sucks air through the house. When the house is windy, one can walk around with a smoke pencil, a small device that shoots out bursts of visible gas, and by watching where they fly the tester can find elusive holes. The process should cost a couple hundred bucks and once the holes get patched up, could pay for itself. - Excerpt from businessweek.com.
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2. Mind the gaps
David Johnston, a “recovering contractor” and author of Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time, says the key to an energy-efficient home is controlling the holes where air and moisture can escape. “There are lots of places where a little caulk and weather-stripping goes a long way,” he says. Additionally, homeowners should check the attic, especially areas near vents and chimneys where heat escapes.
Once the leaks are found, Johnston recommends using blown-in cellulose insulation, often made from recycled newspapers and a fire retardant, instead of the fiberglass variety. In the attic, it’s possible to create an “insulated top hat” for the house. Drew Smith, president of green-building consultancy Two Trails, says that adding insulation to a home’s ductwork is another way to ensure the hot air you’re paying for doesn’t escape. - Excerpt from businessweek.com.
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Follow the EnergyStar
A joint program of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Dept., EnergyStar is probably the easiest way to pick out energy-saving appliances. According to the program, a family using approved appliances can save up to a third on its energy bill—complemented by a similar reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Since the EPA began the program in 1992 with products that included computers and monitors it has expanded to consumer goods ranging from lights to refrigerators. The program aims to endorse products that have equivalent performance to their more wasteful counterparts. EnergyStar-approved products aren’t a bad idea for businesses either. - Excerpt from businessweek.com
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“In February, Dole Food began labeling its offerings with ‘farm codes’. The stickers send consumers to doleorganic.com, where typing in the three-digit code identifies the plantiation that grew the banana, along with organic certification details… Organic Valley… has offered a similar feature… since 2004. [See] organicvalley.coop/soy” - Excerpts from the March 19, 2007 UpFront section in BusinessWeek.
“Only time will tell if global warming will be minor or catastrophic; if it can be mitigated or will destroy the planet, to use the phrase. But one thing is certain. Companies shouldn’t wait to find out.” - Excerpt from the February 26, 2007 editorial The Welch Way in BusinessWeek.
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I won’t believe that the U.S. is serious about global warming until I see the feds start throwing real money into R&D into energy and environment-related R&D. After all, no matter what your political views, everyone can agree that more R&D in energy and the environment can only be a good thing.
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Re-Print: Jan 25, 2007 Post -
The above Cover Story by BusinessWeek does the best job of explaining Green Arch Design Group, LLC’s view of business. Green buildings are just the beginning of our efforts.
Click on BusinessWeek Cover image above or link below to view entire article. Click on other images above for Sustainability slide show.
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Beyond the Green Corporation - Podcast
Pete Engardio of BusinessWeek writes “Imagine a world in which eco-friendly and socially responsible pracitices actually help a company’s bottom line. It’s closer than you think.” - excerpt from the January 29, 2007 article in BusinessWeek.
The above Cover Story by BusinessWeek does the best job of explaining Green Arch Design Group, LLC’s view of business. Green buildings are just the beginning of our efforts.
Click on BusinessWeek Cover image above or link below to view entire article. Click on other images above for Sustainability slide show.
Click on the link below to listen to the Cover Story Podcast
Beyond the Green Corporation - Podcast
Pete Engardio of BusinessWeek writes “Imagine a world in which eco-friendly and socially responsible pracitices actually help a company’s bottom line. It’s closer than you think.” - excerpt from the January 29, 2007 article in BusinessWeek.
Click on the link below to view the entire article.
Click on the link below to view the slideshow.
Mickey D’s McMakeover Slideshow
Pallavi Gogoi of BusinessWeek writes about the first major design overhaul in 30 years for the 51-year-old fast food giant. “What will the new McDonald’s look like? “Think iPod: clean lines, simplicity,” says Miologos. The signature mansard roof? History. “The big red roof looks too dated today,” says John Bricker, creative director at design firm Gensler’s brand-strategy arm, Studio 585.” - excerpt from the May 15, 2006 article in BusinessWeek.
We think this is a great example of “green” because the company “has moved aggressively over the past three years to revamp its menu and attract a new breed of customer. It has added healthier items like premium salads targeted at women, and apple slices and skim milk for children.” - excerpt from the May 15, 2006 article in BusinessWeek.
In the interest of full disclosure, we at Green Arch Design Group, LLC are involved as an architecture firm in this facility makeover. We feel it is one of the most exciting series of projects we have ever been involved with.
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Andrew Blum, contributing editor and host of 10 Cutting Edge Designers podcast for www.businessweek.com, talks with Guy Battle of Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers in London. Recorded May 1, 2006.
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BusinessWeek - Positively Green
Heather Green, department editor and host of The Cutting Edge podcast for http://www.businessweek.com/, talks with Alex Steffen, Executive Founder of http://www.worldchanging.com/, the most widely read green blog. Recorded June 14, 2006.
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Heather Green, department editor and host of The Cutting Edge podcast for http://www.businessweek.com/, talks with Joel Makower who writes a blog at http://www.readjoel.com/. Joel is also the founding editor for http://www.greenbiz.com/ as well as Clean Edge, Inc. Recorded June 7, 2006.