Archive for July, 2008

Baseball’s Midsummer Classic may be over, but the game’s green All-Stars are just stepping up to the plate. A new initiative from retired environmentally-conscious ballplayers, called The Fields of Green Team, wants to inspire green living and maybe sell a few green products during the game.

The site offers tips about getting to first, second and third base, as well as hitting that home run, environmentally speaking, of course. The players are also heavily promoting a new fuel additive for your car, called Ultimate ME2, which supposedly helps burn gas more efficiently.

So here is the green team line-up:

Darrell EVANS
Atlanta Braves : San Fransico Giants : Detroit Tigers

Duke SIMS
Cleveland Indians : LA Dodgers : Detroit Tigers : NY Yankees : Texas Rangers

Jon WARDEN
Detroit Tigers

Bill LEE
Boston Red Sox : Montreal Expos

Butch HOBSON
Boston Red Sox : California Angels : New York Yankees

Gary LAVELLE
San Francisco Giants : Toronto Blue Jays : Oakland Athletics

Gary MATTHEWS
SF Giants : Atlanta Braves : Philadelphia Phillies : Chicago Cubs : Seattle Mariners

Johnnie LeMASTER
SF Giants : Cleveland Indians : Pittsburgh Pirates : Oakland Athletics

Kelly GRUBER
Toronto Blue Jays : California Angels

Mike TORREZ
St. Louis Cardinals : Montreal Expos : Baltimore Orioles : Oakland Athletics : NY Yankees : Boston Red Sox : NY Mets

Is your favorite former player on the roster?

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

Tired of your bank passing off paperless checking as the centerpiece of their environmental program? Whether those initiatives are driven by a genuine desire to save the environment or simply the ease of now doing business online is up for debate. Nonetheless, reducing junk mail is definitely on the green business radar. And companies like GreenDimes are trying to profit from the environmental benefits of getting your name off those junk mailers’ lists.

So what if mail is still the best way to reach your target audiences? Recently a Green Marketing Coalition was established to promote the greening of direct marketing, as reported by the New York Times. Unfortunately for this effort, the initiative has been received by environmentalists as somewhat of a joke.

The recommended guidelines are vague and weak, including common sense approaches like proofing on a computer rather than printing hard copies and using chlorine-free recycled paper. One particularly silly feature of the site links users to government incentives for going green. Good luck finding a way to connect renewable energy tax credits to your mailing campaign.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

In a telling blow to the coal industry’s beloved red herring, so called “clean coal technology,” yet another research and development project has been canceled.Last week State officials in New York decided that spending over $1.6 billion on a completely speculative “clean coal” project in the Town of Tonawanda, near Buffalo, was environmentally irresponsible, according to a report relayed by The New York League of Conservation Voters.

Furthermore, the “clean coal” project would have required $175 million to $250 million in taxpayer subsidies every single year for up to 20 years. Supposedly, this unproven technology would somehow “capture the carbon dioxide that the facility generates, liquefy it and store it in geological formations more than a mile underground, where it would be expected to stay for thousands of years.” That sounds a lot like science fiction. Clearly the public’s money is better spent investing in reliable alternative energy solutions like solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear.

Despite the coal industry’s massive advertising efforts, it appears that governments are waking up to the reality that “clean coal” financing is a waste. Last January, the U.S. Department of Energy finally pulled the plug on the Bush administration’s flagship energy project, the FutureGen “clean coal” plant in Illinois, after costs ballooned by the billions. If you are interested in a more in-depth recap of the project’s failure, check out NRDC’s Switchboard blog.

Although “clean coal” is often spun as the industry solution to greenhouse gas emissions, even big oil is dropping out of actually funding “clean coal” projects. The Beyond Petroleum people at BP decided last May to cancel their own $2 billion dollar “clean coal” project in Australia.

It’s time for some fair and balanced reporting by the media and a call for an end to the media presentation of “clean coal” as a viable and affordable energy option or even possibility, because we all know the dirty little truth - no “clean coal” plant exists. It’s time someone steps up to the plate to persuade the public to stop believing in the virtues of “healthy cigarettes” and “clean coal”.

By Grant Draper at The Element Agency in New York

Climate clairvoyant Al Gore has laid out some ambitious new plans in a interview to the Associated Press yesterday previewing an upcoming speech.Gore, after giving both Obama and McCain their due, presented the energy crisis as an opportunity to turn every kilowatt of energy used in the US into green power.

Gore presented the investment in terms of the opportunity cost. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that Gore chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to green electricity at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years. But a roughly equal amount would be needed to build coal plants to satisfy demand.While noting that electricity itself does not account for the entirety of the emissions contributing to climate change, Gore sees this challenge as good first step: “If we meet this challenge we will solve the rest of it.”

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

The biennial airshow held in Britain brought out some top players in the industry including Canada’s own — once-admired, now controversial — jet manufacturer Bombardier.

Most of the industry honchos cautiously bragged about their own green initiatives, mostly forward looking technological advances, but they also took a more churlish, though still trepidatious, approach to the EU proposed emissions trading scheme.

They all settled on the talking point that the airline industry is a relatively small emitter especially when compared to deforestation.

Bombardier took the opportunity to announce its new line of single-aisle, fuel efficient jets. CEO Pierre Beaudoin: “With the latest in-system technologies and aerodynamics, the CSeries family of aircraft will revolutionize the economics and network strategies for airline operations in the 100- to 149-seat commercial market.”

The others, Boeing and Airbus notably, also touted touted the efficiencies of their new aircraft as well.

While still trying to get out of the spotlight, it is appreciated that these companies are recognizing the need to change. Though one can’t underestimate the market forces prodding them in the rear end either.

By Don Millar at The Element Agency in Vancouver

By Tim Richter of GE Global Research, today’s guest blogger

Hi everyone. First, it’s great to have the opportunity to write a guest entry for “My Green Element.” I lead research in hybrid systems at GE’s Global Research Center, which is based in Upstate New York. You may not immediately associate hybrids with GE, but it is actually a big part of the company’s DNA and technology development focus.

GE’s experience in hybrids can be traced back to our company’s founder, the world’s most prolific inventor, Thomas Edison. Edison focused a lot of attention in the early 1900s on developing batteries to support an electric vehicle platform. Henry Ford won the vehicle market with the Model T and gasoline engines, but when the energy crisis hit the US in the late 1970s, GE’s Research Center participated in several hybrid projects with the U.S. Department of Energy and various automakers. We even built and successfully demonstrated a plug-in hybrid electric car in 1983 that achieved over 100 MPG.

Hybrids are a great fit with our expertise in motors, controls and energy management. In fact, our Transportation business is introducing a hybrid locomotive to the world next year. The first pre-production units are expected to be out in 2009.

How does it work? First, it’s important to know that locomotives today already run on a diesel-electric or hybrid engine. What we have added with our hybrid locomotive are batteries to store energy from the braking process for later use that would otherwise be wasted energy.

The GE Transportation business also is interested in hybrid technology for mining trucks and tugboats. Global Research is continuing development of “mega-hybrids” with advanced energy management and novel battery hardware design using dual-battery configurations on a fuel cell bus funded in part by the US Federal Transit Administration’s National Fuel Cell Bus Program.

Most recently, GE was selected by the DOE to partner with Chrysler on a PHEV project. We’re in the midst of negotiating a contract with the DOE, but the plan is for GE to develop a dual-battery energy storage system where Chrysler would lead vehicle design and integration of the GE system. The goal is to demonstrate an economically viable plug-in car within 3-5 years that achieves an electric range of 40 miles. Given that the average work commute for motorists is about 30 miles, you wouldn’t have to fill up your gas tanks for weeks, maybe months!

Given our past experience with hybrids and with electricity in general, we think we can really help accelerate PHEV technology advancements. All of this work brings us closer to long-range electric vehicles either in range-extender configurations or pure EVs. The technology is also compatible with hydrogen-powered engines and can work to provide higher system efficiency stretching the range of each kg of hydrogen. Climate change and peak oil are pressuring transportation products to be clean and green, but consumers will still demand affordability and the performance of today’s cars. Technology advancements such as those being developed at GE will help meet these new markets.

 Editor’s note: Tim Richter is Lead Hybrid Systems Engineer at GE Global Research.  He contributes to the GE Global Research blog, From Edison’s Desk.  

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.

By Mary Lemmer of Maggie’s Organics, today’s guest blogger 

What are your clothes made of?  Who made them?  Inputs of clothing production have significant effects on the physical and social environment, so should be considered when making purchasing decisions.

 Take a look at the cotton industry.  Insecticides used in conventional cotton production are the most hazardous pesticide to human health, causing behavioral changes, increased cancer risk, and even death.  Cotton’s second best selling insecticide, Aldicarb, can kill a man with just one drop absorbed through the skin!  Who knew wearing cotton could be so dangerous?

 Not only is human health impacted, but fertilizers used in conventional cotton production harm the environment.  Nitrogen synthetic fertilizers cause leaching and runoff and emit gases that contribute 300 times more to global warming than CO2.  Given that it takes about 1/3 pound of synthetic fertilizers to grow one pound of raw cotton, and it takes that pound of cotton to make one t-shirt, producing clothing made with conventional cotton has a detrimental impact on the environment.

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By Ram Appalaraju of Azul Systems, today’s guest blogger

The marching order has been given to go green – many industry organizations and market analysts have trumpeted that the move is underway. Gartner made Green IT # 1 on its list of “Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008.” Don’t see every datacenter moving out the energy-hogs and moving in the “green leaders”? It could be because of the false assumption that achieving a more energy efficient datacenter also means sacrificing performance.

Part of what Azul Systems calls its “Green In Mind” initiative is to prove out within our own operations that the highest performing computing can also become the greenest. And along the way we found that it helps in more than just the quality of our products – it attracts great talent to the company, streamlines operations, and makes us an overall better company.

Overcoming Preconceived Ideas

In technology companies, the mindset that often develops is that performance suffers when green is the goal. Engineers are taught early on that sacrificing efficiency is often the cost of maximizing performance.

How do you break these preconceived ideas so that the desired solution of both powerful and green can be achieved? Understanding then working on primary drivers is one way to get started. There are three primary drivers that motivate Azul, and we believe most businesses, when it comes to Green IT. These are technology drivers, business needs, and corporate governance. Certainly there are additional motivations (not least being social conscience, community involvement, or political positioning), but without a compelling drive from these “bottom line” three, not much progress is made.

Technology Requirements with “Green In Mind™”

IT data centers have specific needs for both compute capacity and compute performance. Today this is often accomplished through a divide and conquer approach – find a compute platform with sufficient performance, then buy enough of them to satisfy the capacity need. Key fact here is that these high performing machines are usually the least energy efficient, and by having enough of them to meet peak demand times means they lay idle (underutilized), just burning power but not doing useful work.

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A certain My Green Element editor will be thrilled that Maker’s Mark is re-using their waste.

Green Wombat as a good break down of the recent solar ruling.

Call me unconvinced that this will change anything.

Everyone’s favourite Fourth of July memory: toxic FEMA trailers!

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

The first pricing for carbon and other green house gases has now been installed in British Columbia. The initiative of the Liberal government of the province took effect July 1st.

Some growing pains: the 2.4 cents increase at the pump turned out to be a dime in some places. But the natural reaction to just about anything is for gas stations to raise the price.

The carbon tax came with a one time rebate of $100, mailed out to every resident in the province.

Interestingly enough, the more left-of-center New Democratic Party, has come out against the idea.

Though it is still in it’s infancy My Green Element will stay on the case….

Happy Fourth of July, to our America friends.

Happy 400th to Quebec City.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver