Efficiency Technologies Ready To Set Sail Last week, as the world’s leading maritime players gathered in Oslo for the 50th Nor-Shipping conference, Norsepower Oy Ltd. shared the successful trial of its Rotor Sail Solution, a wind propulsion technology for maritime ships. Verified by ship design and operation software modeling firm NAPA and supported by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Norsepower’s trials confirm fuel savings of 2.6 percent using a single small Rotor Sail on a route in the North Sea. With these fuel savings, this new wind propulsion technology has a payback period of just four years. The Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution is a modernized version of the Flettner rotor—a spinning vertical cylinder that harnesses wind power to propel a ship. The Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution was installed on the 9,700 dead weight tonnage roll-on-roll-off (RoRo) carrier MS Estraden. Norsepower’s target installation for vessels is four large rotors installed on one vessel. Of course, this is just one technology.
2030 Districts: Communities Collaborating to Reach Inspirational Goals with Measured Performance If buildings are a major contributor to climate change, then what’s the solution? Reductions in energy use, water use, and transportation emissions, of course. But, how do we know how far we have to go, how fast – and how will we know when we as an industry are part of the solution and not still the problem? Even more interesting, if you own an existing building, how do you know if you’re doing your part? For almost a decade, The 2030 Challenge has provided an inspirational, measurable goal for properties to reach for – and measures for figuring out how we’re doing. Existing Buildings – 50% reductions in energy use, water consumption, and transportation emissions below baselines by 2030 (with incremental goals).New Construction – 70% reduction in energy use below baseline today, leading towards carbon neutral design by 2030; 50% reductions today below baselines for water use and transportation emissions. 2030 Measures National 2030 Challenge Energy Baseline 2030 District Water Baselines
Zero Counties in the U.S. Have Enough Housing for Families in Extreme Poverty From Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. From Jacksonville to Juneau. No matter where you look, there isn’t enough affordable housing. Without exception, there is no county in the U.S. that has enough affordable housing. New research from the Urban Institute shows that the supply of housing for extremely low-income families, which was already in short supply, is only declining. Using data from the Census Bureau and the U.S. In Travis County, Texas, for example, the extremely low-income cutoff for a family of four is $21,950. The Urban Institute’s research shows how the number of extremely low-income households around the nation has grown since 2000. Strike federal support from the map—as many members of Congress might like to do—and the picture grows considerably bleaker. The Urban Institute’s interactive map shows just what a dire situation the nation would face without federal housing assistance. At the other end of the spectrum, the situation is bleak.
Handle with humor: why we want you to laugh about climate change With the historic People’s Climate March taking place in cities around the world last year, the landmark US-China deal, as well as record carbon-dioxide levels and the hottest year on record, awareness of the potential devastation of climate change continues to grow. Now, even the Pope has spoken about it – and yet, public concern over the issue remains low. There once was a time when climate change was very popular to discuss. Al Gore made that movie, Leonardo DiCaprio snuggled polar bears, there was a potential green economy and even dumb ol’ Congress debated carbon cap and trade. So climate change took the back burner as people had more important things to worry about. The worst part about climate change is the longer we don’t do anything about it, the more likely it is to be as bad as scientists say. It’s naturally hard to see that glimmer of hope behind the giant shroud of depressing facts, so maybe it’s time to make the facts a little less depressing.
Nutella Sparks War Of Words Between European Environmental Ministers There’s a storm brewing in Europe over a chocolate breakfast spread. The French minister of ecology has Italy up in arms over comments she made about deforestation on French television Monday, during which she encouraged people to stop eating Nutella, an Italian-made chocolate hazelnut spread. “We have to replant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to global warming. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it’s made with palm oil,” Ségolène Royal said. “Oil palms have replaced trees, and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment,” she added. Italian politicians shot back Tuesday, with the Italian minister of the environment telling Royal to “leave Italian products alone.” Another politician tweeted that Royal should apologize, calling her comments a “grave and ugly” insult. Cutting down on palm oil use is seen as a key part of curbing deforestation — and carbon emissions.
EIA finds wind energy will have largest role in cost-effectively meeting Clean Power Plan | Wind | Generation and Storage | Energy Central Low-cost, zero-emission wind energy will become even more valuable as states and utilities develop plans to cost-effectively reduce carbon pollution to comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan, according to new economic analysis from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a nonpartisan branch of the Department of Energy (DOE). EIA’s analysis modeled a range of options for complying with EPA’s proposed rule across a variety of scenarios, and wind energy consistently emerged as the lowest cost option for reducing emissions. World Resources Institute also released analysis today that looked at all economy-wide options for reducing carbon pollution and found that, thanks to recent cost declines, renewable energy is poised to make the largest contributions to emissions reductions. In WRI’s optimal energy mix scenarios, renewable energy grew to provide 27 to 28 percent of electricity in 2030 and 36 to 38 percent in 2040. Change in output under Clean Power Plan relative to Reference Case
Why Moby Wants You To Stop Showering Skip Showers For Beef, a new grassroots project born of the California drought, acknowledges that giving up beef — a product that uses huge amounts of water — is hard. So the campaign’s creators have come up with a creative way for Californians to keep eating meat while reducing their water use: Just stop showering. The project’s premise is a simple one — by the creators’ calculations, every four ounce hamburger requires roughly 450 gallons of water to produce. To offset those gallons, the average Californian would need to skip 26 showers. “We’re not saying people should eat beef, we’re just saying people can eat beef, and here’s how,” Tom Bransford, co-founder of Skip Showers For Beef, told ThinkProgress. “If California as a state wants to keep producing beef, there’s a way they can do that — by everybody following a plan like this.” The California cattle industry is the fifth largest in the state’s agricultural sector, bringing in $3.3 billion in revenue in 2012.
Climate Change Is Helping One Weird Pest Destroy More Crops One of the worst agricultural pests in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse. According to new research published in PLOS One, the effects of climate change have caused tiny but devastating migratory insects known as potato leafhoppers to arrive a full 10 days earlier than they did 60 years ago. Not only that, but the research shows that bug infestation levels are worse in warmer years, meaning they could pose a much greater threat than they have for decades. In turn, the warmer weather may push the insects to travel farther north then they typically care to, meaning potato leafhoppers could soon move into regions where they currently aren’t posing much of a threat. “How much farther north is it going to move, and for which crops do we need to start gearing up our management?” asked Dilip Venugopal, the study’s coauthor and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland. RELATED: Your Carbon Emissions May End Up Starving Poor People in Africa
Your Fresh Fish Dinner Now Comes with a Dose of Prescription Drugs Researchers have known for more than a decade that the pharmaceuticals we consume tend to turn up secondhand in wildlife. Sometimes this can have horrible effects. Chemical hormones in birth control pills, for instance, pass into the urine and are released via municipal sewage plants into the environment, where they can become potent endocrine disruptors. These drugs alter the reproductive physiology and behavior of fish downstream, with impacts including feminized or intersex males. But so far, society’s reaction has largely been a collective shrug: Those are fish, not people. A new study in the journal Food Chemistry should shake us out of our complacency. The results: Eleven of 14 fish servings contained elevated levels of the two drugs. Moreover, the fish weren’t just freshwater species, such as catfish or its Asian cousin swai, which might predictably pick up wastewater treatment byproducts in river habitats. (Photo: UGA College of Ag and Environmental Sciences/Flickr)
Can Technology Save Africa’s Forests? In 2000, Lilian Pintea was getting ready to end his first stint of fieldwork at Gombe Stream Research Center, in Tanzania, when he was invited to stop by Jane Goodall’s house for a drink (she prefers Scotch). Goodall tries to spend a few days each year in the place where she made the discoveries about chimpanzees that made her famous, and she enjoys hearing about the ongoing work at what is possibly the world’s longest-running continually operated field station in wildlife research. Pintea’s specialty was using satellite photos to show changes to ecosystems. He had come to Gombe by way of Moscow State University in Russia, the University of Minnesota, and the World Bank, to see firsthand how the center’s long-term data on chimps, matched to his images, might explain how habitat changes were affecting the animals. “When you see her for the first time,” Pintea recalled of meeting Goodall, “she’s a superstar—one of the last explorers.” “Nobody could read it,” Moore told me.
This County In Oregon Completely Banned GMO Crops. Here's Why That Matters For The Environment. On June 5, Oregon’s Jackson County became the newest county in the U.S. to have an active ban on the growing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Genetically Engineered Plant Ordinance went into effect following the partial dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a group of noncommercial alfalfa farmers on May 29. The farmers sought to overturn the GMO ban, viewing the ordinance as a violation of their economic and legal rights. The ordinance restricts the cultivation of GMO plants. These largely unexplored long-term effects that GMOs may have on agricultural health and environmental well-being were among the greatest concerns raised by anti-GMO advocates and county ban supporters. Monsanto is responsible for the vast majority of GMO seed sales, allowing the company to create popular Roundup Ready seeds that resist the pesticide. Monsanto has vigorously denied claims of environmental harm from its pesticides, but environmentalists, health specialists, and farmers remain concerned.
5 Trends Transforming the US Energy Sector Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter written just for retail energy buyers Sonia Aggarwal of research firm Energy Innovation posted on Utility Dive about five trends shaping energy markets today. Energy Innovation also curates the website for America’s Power Plan – a policy toolkit developed by over 150 energy professionals with the goal of promoting clean, affordable and reliable power. Regional Markets The western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) has rapidly expanded across the West Coast and Southwest, as far northeast as Wyoming. Larger power markets are generally more efficient than small ones as they give buyers more flexibility in procuring power, and the EIM is expected to save customers between $72 million and $208 million per year. The eastern half of the country has moved further toward full integration of regional energy markets in the markets overseen by regional transmission organizations (ERCOT, ISO-New England, MISO, NYISO, and PJM). Performance-Based Utility Rates