EnviroPolitics Blog

More signs of business leaning to green

The environment is increasingly on the minds of businesses these days. In New Jersey, the state’s largest utility, PSEG broke with precedent (and some of its business colleagues) in endorsing the state’s recently adopted global-warming law that sets firm deadlines for reductions in greenhouse gases.

In New York, officials of the Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) announced a new energy plan for the commercial real estate sector which it admits “accounts for 18% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and $24 billion a year in energy costs. “

The voluntary plan encourages members of the 16,500-member organization to reduce their use of resources through a seven-step program. It targets a decrease in energy consumption by 30 percent by 2012. Read more in The Daily Green.

Meanwhile, in Oakland California, organizers have announced the formation of a national Green Chamber, a new organization that aims to bring environmentally friendly businesses together for networking, resource-sharing, lobbying and to advance common goals.

As reported in GreenBiz.com, the Green Chamber starts out with 16 regional directors, who will be responsible for certifying new members from their region, as well as coordinating the activities within each region. The directors also are charged with reviewing each membership application to screen out potential “greenwashers” (those who advertises positive environmental practices while acting in the opposite way).

New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island businesses fall under the organization’s NYC Metro region. It’s director is Joanna Black who can be reached at: joanna.b@thegreenchamber.org or 646.912.2681. The Baltimore/Pennsylvania region’s director is Sherri Loomis – SheriL@thegreenchamber.org – 301.722.3232.
More at: The Green Chamber.

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My power source by the Bay?

An extremely powerful current runs below the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco Bay to the Pacific. The city is studying the possibility of using it to generate electricity but some fear it could involve environmental risks. Judy Campbell filed this audio report for National Public Radio reports from member station KQED in San Francisco.

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Gentlemen, start your hybrids!

In case you think that hybrid autos are fine for puttering around town but not yet ready for prime time driving, check this out.

Toyota made history last weekend by winning the Tokashi 24-Hour Race with its Supra HV-R hybrid race car. It is the first time ever that a Hybrid race car has won a competition.

Autoblog reports that the car did so in convincing fashion.

“As the only GT-class car in the field, the Denso SARD Supra HV-R maintained a steady lead of several laps throughout the course of the race, and in the later hours, it essentially dialed things up a notch and ran away from the rest of the field. “

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Fill ‘er up…with citrus peels?

Can that corn. Make your ethanol with grapefruit and orange peels.

That’s the plan in Florida, where Citrus Energy, LLC plans to build a 4 million gallons per year ethanol bio-refinery, using the state’s plentiful, low-cost supply of citrus waste as the feedstock. The company calls citrus waste “the most economically attractive and technically feasible of the potential cellulosic feedstocks” and claims the process is less costly than using corn.

The company’s website lays out the economics behind the idea:

“Florida has 100 million citrus trees on 800,000 acres which provide 250 million boxes of citrus (80% of U.S. production) and 90 % goes to Florida’s 20 citrus processing plants, producing over 5 million tons of citrus waste annually. Most of the citrus processing waste is dried into what is commonly referred to as citrus pulp pellets (CPP) and fed to cattle. The production of CPP requires a large capital investment by the processor with little if any return on investment. During recent years, processors have been unable to sell CPP for a price high enough to pay for processing costs, let alone their capital investment. The CPP losses are borne by the main product from citrus, orange or grapefruit juice. Due to the high capital cost, many small citrus juice processors are unable to install feed mills to produce CPP, leaving them with tons of citrus waste for disposal. This has contributed to several small processors closing in recent years, reducing the demand for citrus fruit and depressing fruit prices paid to growers. Florida, like some other areas of the country does not have suitable climate for corn production and requires alternate ethanol feedstock development. Citrus processing waste, a pectin, cellulose and soluble sugar rich mixture of peel, segment membranes and seeds is available on a large scale and at A VERY LOW COST. “

Does all this sound more ideal that real? Perhaps not. Today, FPL Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of FPL Group, which is the $16-billion parent of one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, Florida Power and Light, announced it had signed a letter of agreement with Citrus Energy to develop the first ever commercial scale citrus peel to ethanol plant.

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Cooling buildings with ice? That’s nice

Most Americans are too young to remember the icebox. It was the forerunner of the modern refrigerator, though much smaller, made of wood, lined with tin or zinc and insulated with cork, sawdust, straw or seaweed. It contained a block of ice (delivered to your home by the ‘ice man’) and it kept a family’s fruit, meat, milk and butter cold as long as the ice held out.

Today, a number of corporations are applying this great-grandfather technology to cool their giant office buildings and reduce their giant-sized air conditioning bills. Credit Suisse, for example, is cooling 1.9 million square feet of office space at the Met Life tower, a historic building that was New York’s tallest in the days before the Empire State Building. The system took about four months to construct and company engineers say it is extremely efficient. Colleen Long of the Associated Press, reports on The Discovery Channel that: “Because electricity is needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large silver tanks at night when power demands are low. The cool air emanating from the ice blocks is then piped throughout the building more or less like traditional air conditioning. At night the water is frozen again and the cycle repeats.

“The concept is the same, but when you make something mechanical, it can break, but a big block of ice four floors below grade level isn’t going to do anything but melt,” said Todd Coulard of Trane Energy Services. The company built the Credit Suisse system and is one of several that work with ice storage.”

Ice storage at Credit Suisse lowers the facility’s peak energy use by 900 kilowatts, and reduces overall electric usage by 2.15 million kilowatt-hours annually — enough to power about 200 homes.In case you’re thinking about converting your home AC system over the weekend and giving the ice man a call, please note that the Credit Suisse project cost $3 million, although incentives were provided by New York State’s Energy Research and Development Authority.

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Read this while swigging your next Evian

The July issue of Fast Company magazine contains an article called “Message in a Bottle” that was an eye-opener for me, and just might be for you, too.

Here are two paragraphs to give you an idea of what I mean:

“Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets–$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.

Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We–a generation raised on tap water and water fountains–drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we’re raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We’ve come to pay good money–two or three or four times the cost of gasoline–for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes. “

Four times the cost of gasoline? The price we’re always grumbling about? For stuff we can get for pennies from our water faucets? Yes! In fact, as the article points out:

“If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.”

You can check out the entire article here.

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