Researchers say some companies bought renewable power because customers pushed them to.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:
Transcript
The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:
The report’s from the Center for Resource Solutions, an advocacy group.
Orrin Cook was a co-author. He totaled up growth in sales of wind, solar and other renewable energy between 2003 and 2008. He compared how much growth came from government mandates and how much was bought voluntarily. Cook says the voluntary market grew a tad faster.
“States requiring renewable energy and federal government requiring renewable energy is really just part of that equation. Another part is businesses and individuals buying renewable energy when they don’t have to.”
Cook says this voluntary renewable energy market grew because some companies have eco-minded managers. But he says companies also bought renewable power because customers pushed them to.
Cook looked at federal figures that came out before the financial crisis.
When it comes to global warming,
America’s in a bind. Almost half
of our electricity comes from coal.
But, compared to other power sources,
coal produces the most carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas. Industry’s testing
so-called ‘clean coal’ technology to
deal with the problem. Shawn Allee has this update on a test
project that has some hard work
left to do:
Transcript
When it comes to global warming,
America’s in a bind. Almost half
of our electricity comes from coal.
But, compared to other power sources,
coal produces the most carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas. Industry’s testing
so-called ‘clean coal’ technology to
deal with the problem. Shawn Allee has this update on a test
project that has some hard work
left to do:
If you live outside coal-mining country, you may have missed this news about a clean-coal project in West Virginia.
“A big announcement has the state and members of the coal industry very excited about the future of the state’s most valuable resource. Good Evening, I’m April Hall…“
The fanfare’s about a company called American Electric Power. Last fall, AEP started a test that could begin a clean-coal revolution.
“The Mountaineer power plant in Mason County is going to be the first facility in the world to use carbon capture and sequestration technology to cut down on the carbon dioxide that that plant emits. AEP is hoping the implementation …“
The Mountaineer test project made headlines because there’s talk of clamping down on America’s carbon dioxide emissions. Coal produces nearly twice its own weight in carbon dioxide. So, if we could bury or sequester the stuff that would help solve the coal industry’s carbon dioxide problem. Expectations are high, but the company is keeping its cool.
“The tension we’re fighting against is the fact that you can’t go from concepts on paper to commercial scale in one step.“
Gary Spitznogle runs an engineering division for AEP, and if you think he sounds cautious, it’s because he is. Spitznogle says AEP needs to validate carbon capture and sequestration.
“Validation is kind of that intermediate step between what is truly research work and full commercial scale.“
Validation is another way of saying this technology mostly works but let’s take it for a spin. Let’s run bigger and bigger tests, so we learn more and more.
“The test is treating the amount of gas that would be coming from a 20MW generating unit, so that’s very small.“
From 20 megawatts now to two hundred fifty megawatts in a few years – that’s still less than a quarter of the power generation at the Mountaineer plant.
But what’s the point of tests like this? Well, there’s a problem with carbon capture and sequestration: it wastes coal. This waste is called parasitic load. Parasitic – as in parasite.
Spitznogle: “And because it’s taking the power it’s consuming from the generating plant that you’re controlling, it’s in a sense a parasite of that power plant.“
Allee: “Sounds kind of nefarious.“
Spitznogle: “The reason is that it’s such a focus is that, no matter what technology you look at, the number is large.“
Carbon capture and sequestration equipment need power. That adds a parasitic load of thirty percent onto a coal plant. That means it takes thirty percent more coal to generate the same amount of electricity for customers. Spitznogle needs to find out if his technology cuts that parasitic load figure. Other people hope he finds out, too.
“The overarching concern I would have today is urgency.“
Ernest Moniz runs MIT’s Energy Institute. He says if power companies don’t get a handle on parasitic load we’re in for higher utility bills. One estimate puts the cost of clean-coal power at seventy percent above today’s prices. Moniz says we need bigger tests and more of them.
“We’re pushing up against the envelope and we have to do it. If we’re going to be serious about using our extensive coal reserves in a time of carbon constraints, well, then we have to just demonstrate this technology.“
If we fail to demonstrate clean coal technology, the choices aren’t good. We’d have to abandon our cheap coal supplies or we’d burn dirty coal, then deal with the costs of climate change.
Scientists say this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before.
(Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)
You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:
Transcript
You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:
Virginia Walbot researches corn genetics at Stanford University, and recently she got news that didn’t just make her day – it kinda made her decade. Walbot says scientists just finished sequencing genes of an important corn genome.
“The genes are like the words in different languages and what you need is a dictionary that lists all those words, and that dictionary for us, is the genome sequence.“
Walbot says this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before. That’s a big deal because even though we benefit from corn we have now, we could make it better. For example, corn creates environmental problems – take corn fertilizer.
“Of course, adding fertilizer really boosts a lot of yield, but the downstream effects aren’t really great. So, there’s runoff from farms that contaminates the water supply. Making corn as efficient as possible and just giving enough fertilizer to sustain yields, those would be fantastic goals.“
Now, most corn researchers want to meet environmental goals, but there’s a question science alone can’t answer – what kinds of corn should we grow or improve?
Kinds of corn? Maybe you’re thinkin’ “corn chips” versus “popcorn” but there’re bigger differences. We eat sweet corn – most corn’s starchy industrial stuff.
“I think that’s one thing consumers get confused about. Today, only one percent of corn production goes into sweet corn.“
That’s Pam Johnson. She’s with the National Corn Growers Association. Johnson says about half our corn goes to animal feed, then we eat the meat or dairy products from that.
But a lot goes to industrial products, too. Ethanol uses more than a third of the corn in the American corn market.
Johnson says corn farmers want scientists to create specialty industrial corn that can fetch premium prices – like corn just for ethanol or corn just for renewable, corn-based plastic.
“You know, we’ve always said for a long time that anything that’s made from petroleum might be able to be made from a renewable and I think that’s an exciting thing to ponder as a corn grower.“
Johnson predicts new genetic science will also improve corn we eat directly, but is that likely to happen?
“I have my doubts.“
That’s Rainer Bussman. He’s with The Missouri Botanical Garden, and he studies how people use plants.
“Feeding people is less economic incentive than producing large amounts of corn for animal feed or biofuels, so I do have my doubts there.“
Bussman says it’s a shame food varieties of corn will get less attention from genetic research. He says he worries about food security. He figures if we grow more types of food corn we’ll be better protected from crop diseases.
It’s also a matter of taste, though. Bussman’s traveled the world and tasted corn we don’t grow here – like a blue kind in South America.
“They would call that maize murada which means purple corn and that is mostly used to produce a very refreshing, sweet beverage, so you get this get this deeply purple, sugary drink. It’s all natural, no sugar added.“
Bussman says Native Americans and the earliest settlers produced hundreds of varieties of corn for all kinds of food dishes – corn for just pudding, just bread, just porridge, and so on. They created this food diversity without modern genetic science, but we do have it.
Bussman asks why should our science just improve animal feed, ethanol, and bio-plastic? Why not make food our priority, too?
West Michigan Park lies along the Tittabawassee River. Large swaths of its soil was removed and re-sodded due to dioxin contamination. The removal was part of a US EPA effort to have Dow clean up several hot spots in the rivershed.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
One thing we hear over and over
from the Obama Administration
is that when it comes to the
environment, science should set
the agenda. Right now, though,
the chemical industry is accusing
the administration of abandoning
that idea. Shawn Allee reports it has to do with the science
behind a potent toxin:
Transcript
One thing we hear over and over
from the Obama Administration
is that when it comes to the
environment, science should set
the agenda. Right now, though,
the chemical industry is accusing
the administration of abandoning
that idea. Shawn Allee reports it has to do with the science
behind a potent toxin:
President George W. Bush took it on the chin when it came to the environment. One accusation is that he ignored science that suggested we should get tougher on green house gas emissions.
President Obama’s Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency is Lisa Jackson. She said things would be different.
“On my first day, I sent a memo to every EPA employee stating that our path would be guided by the best science and by the rule of law, and that every action we took would be subject to unparalleled transparency.”
It hasn’t taken long for the chemical industry to say Obama’s Administration is back-tracking.
“There’s been this notion to get things done, and it get it done fast.”
That’s David Fischer, an attorney for the American Chemistry Council. Fischer’s concerned about new standards on dioxins.
Dioxins are by-products from producing chemicals. They also get into the environment from burning trash and wood.
The government says dioxin causes cancer and reproductive and developmental diseases.
It’s known this for decades, but it’s been finishing a report to show exactly how toxic dioxins are. It’s been writing this dioxin reassessment for 18 years, and it was supposed to put out a draft last week.
But it didn’t do that, and it hasn’t said when it will.
That didn’t stop the EPA from proposing a new rule about how much dioxin should be allowed in the soil in peoples’ yards.
Fischer says that rule should wait.
“If they’re going to base goals based on the best available science, and they have, in fact, stated they plan to, it’s hard to imagine how you can do that before the reassessment’s finished because that does after all represent or should represent the best available science.”
The chemical industry’s concerned because dozens of sites across the country are contaminated with dioxins. And the rule would lower the amount of dioxin allowed in residential soil. It would go from 1000 parts per trillion to 72 parts per trillion – that’s a drop of more than 90%.
Fischer says that could cost companies millions of dollars in extra clean-up costs.
“Again, that begs the question, Why?”
One accusation is that the Obama administration wanted to finalize dioxin soil regulations in time to coincide with controversial, on-going dioxin clean-ups, such as one in central Michigan.
The EPA didn’t answer this question directly and wouldn’t provide an interview in time for this report. But it did say it’s got sound science to justify the proposed dioxin soil rule.
You might ask why this matters. Well, just look at central Michigan, where there’s a large, on-going dioxin cleanup.
Linda Dykema works with Michigan’s Department of Community Health. She creates state standards on how much dioxin should be allowed in water, fish, and soil. To protect people in Michigan, she needs help from the EPA.
“We rely a great deal on federal agencies to provide us with some hazard assessment for chemicals. The ability of the state to public health staff to do those kinds of assessments is pretty limited. They can do what needs to be done and what we can’t do here at the state.”
And a ruling on dioxin levels in soil should help Dykema. But this move by the EPA might cause more problems than it solves. For years, the chemical industry’s argued that the science behind dioxin isn’t complete.
This proposed soil rule gives the chemical industry another chance to say, ‘here we go again.’ And the justification it needs to keep fighting a rule the EPA insists protects people’s health.
The US Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas monitoring program will cost businesses about $115 million total this year.
(Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
The government wants a better
sense of where America’s greenhouse
gas emissions are coming from,
so starting today -January 1, 2010,
more than ten-thousand businesses
will have to report them. Shawn
Allee explains:
Transcript
The government wants a better
sense of where America’s greenhouse
gas emissions are coming from,
so starting today -January 1, 2010,
more than ten-thousand businesses
will have to report them. Shawn
Allee explains:
Oil refineries that fuel our cars now have to report greenhouse gas emissions to the federal government. So do kilns that make cement for homes and businesses. Same thing for landfills that take our garbage.
Ed Repa is with the National Solid Waste Management Association – a trade group.
“The gas itself that’s being generated at the landfill is basically 50% methane, which is what natural gas is, and fifty percent CO2. Those gases are produced by organic materials for the landfill. That’s either paper or grass, or yard waste.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas monitoring program will cost businesses about 115 million dollars total this year.
Most businesses can handle the new costs, but some small businesses with big emissions could be hit harder.
Researchers say preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere - maybe above and beyond airplane's carbon emissions.
(Photo courtesy of NOAA)
It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:
Transcript
It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:
Mark Jacobson studies atmospheric science at Stanford University.
He’s just finished research on airplane emissions, including contrails. Those’re the streaming vapor clouds you see coming out of high-flying airplanes.
Jacobson wants to see if contrails contribute to global warming.
“And we’re trying to find out what’s the relative contribution of aircraft to that warming.”
Jacobson says preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere – maybe above and beyond airplane’s carbon emissions.
He says his upcoming paper will likely stir a lot of debate next year, since flying’s becoming more common and there hasn’t been much research on its impact yet.
The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:
Transcript
It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:
The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents for things like better solar panels.
The office wants to give preferential treatment to 3,000 green tech patent applications. That could save a year of waiting time for approval.
But not everyone thinks a Patent Office backlog is the problem.
Stuart Soffer is a patent analyst in Silicon Valley. He says green tech just takes time and money.
“It really takes an investment, infrastructure and R and D. We can make a little wind mill that will generate power in your back yard, but scaling that to power cities is a different problem.”
Soffer says sometimes, patent delays are companies’ fault, not the government’s. So, speeding things up at the Patent Office might not get green tech in the marketplace any faster.
Peter Baranyai directs Wastewater Operations for the
Sanitary District of East Chicago, Indiana. The plant's
effluent channel looks like a natural stream and has
apparently fooled wilflide into thinking so, too.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Chinook salmon and lake trout find their way from
Lake Michigan through shipping channels, past steel
mills and chemical factories to make their way to East
Chicago's waste water effluent channel. Then, they have
to flitter through a long pipe into this concrete channel.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
The salmon's last hurdle into East Chicago's water
treatment plant is seen through this grate. It's a
ledge that leads into a 'contact chamber' where ultraviolet
lamps disinfect treated and filtered waste water. It's
a jump of nearly four feet.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:
Transcript
You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:
Sewage plants are often out of sight, out of mind, and people usually like it that way. But people who work at the water treatment plant in East Chicago, Indiana, want everyone to know about an ecological come-back story there.
I’m game. So I meet the plant director Peter Baranyai.
Allee: “You’ve got this strange mix of some really striking natural areas, rivers and streams, but then everything’s kind of dotted by industry as well, and has been for a long time. What kind of industries are we talking about in this region?”
Baranyai: “Basic steel mills, oil refineries, chemical industries also.”
Allee: “So, when they’re talking ‘heavy industry’, they really mean it here?”
Baranyai: “Yes.”
Allee: “What are we looking at here?”
Baranyai: “We’re trying to look at our discharge channel. That’s the effluent from our treatment plant. This pipe here’s a 60-inch pipe.”
Allee: “You can see the water moving out of it pretty quickly.”
The treated wast water is from nearby homes and factories. And when it leaves the pipe, you’d swear it’s a natural stream. Apparently, it’s fooled plenty of critters, including Chinook salmon.
Each Fall, salmon swim from Lake Michigan, past shipping canals, steel mills and chemical factories – just to spawn in the treated waste water.
Baranyai: “They’re not being too cooperative today because I don’t see too much.”
The salmon spawned earlier than normal this year, so, I only find dead salmon on the banks.
Baranyai: “This was a, oh, almost 4-foot chinook salmon.”
Allee: “Or the evidence of it.”
Baranyai: “And he died.”
Allee: “Again, they’re kind of programmed to die after they spawn.”
Baranyai: “Yeah, he died on the rocks here.”
The government introduced Chinook salmon to Lake Michigan decades ago, but for a long time, salmon wouldn’t spawn here, and birds and nearly everything else shied away, too.
Baranyai says one problem was that they used to disinfect water with chlorine.
Baranyai: “It’s a very effective way of disinfecting, but it continues to disinfect downstream. It’s not selective, usually anyhthing that’s alive, it usually kills. It pretty much sterilizes everything. And that’s how most water treatment plants in our country do that, still.”
Baranyai says in the late 80s, things turned around. His plant added better filters, and now, when they disinfect water, they kill bacteria with ultraviolet light, not chlorine. In just a few years, salmon started spawning – right in the plant. Plus, fresh-water sponges grow in the plant, and herons showed up. Word got around.
Roger Klocek was a biologist at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium at the time. He learned the news from a fellow scientist.
Klocek: “I thought he was nuts, literally. What are you talking about?”
Klocek says you have to understand, for a long time people ignored water treatment plants or they expected them to remove only the worst industrial pollutants.
Klocek: “I had no idea that waste water plants themselves could actually contribute to an improved ecology.”
Allee: “Maybe the opposite, they were putting chlorine in the water or bacteria, if they weren’t disinfecting.”
Klocek: “Absolutely, you know we hear constantly that technology is going to save us and I really don’t believe that. I think we put too much stock in that, but it sure is gratifying to see when there is some technology that makes a remarkable improvement.”
Klocek says, too often, people assume industrial areas like East Chicago will always be ecological basket cases.
He says, sure there’s room for improvement, but having one concrete example of something that works? That can give you hope about what nature can do if you give it a chance.
The chemical Bisphenol-A, or BPA, is found in some plastic food packaging and the inside of most tin-cans.
(Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
The government missed a deadline to
declare whether a chemical in food
packaging is safe. Shawn Allee reports critics are growing
tired of the delay:
Transcript
The government missed a deadline to
declare whether a chemical in food
packaging is safe. Shawn Allee reports critics are growing
tired of the delay:
The chemical is Bisphenol-A, or BPA. It’s found in some plastic food packaging and the inside of most tin-cans.
The US Food and Drug Administration is reviewing whether BPA causes developmental diseases and some cancers. The agency missed a deadline of November 30th, and some groups are getting impatient.
Sarah Jennsen is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She says while the Food and Drug Administration deliberates, more studies are coming out against BPA.
“We’ve had studies now published that show toddlers exposed to BPA behave diffrently from toddlers who are not exposed, and so this human research which is being published is very concerning because it’s replicating what we’ve already seen in the animal studies.
The Food and Drug Administration won’t say which studies it’s including in its scientific review of BPA or when it will finish.
On average, Americans weigh 20 pounds more than they did back in 1974.
(Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
Americans’ waistlines have been
expanding for decades. But new
research suggests at the same time,
more and more food is going to waste.
Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
Americans’ waistlines have been
expanding for decades. But new
research suggests at the same time,
more and more food is going to waste.
Shawn Allee reports:
On average, Americans weigh 20 pounds more than they did back in 1974.
But Kevin Hall found there’s more to the story. He studies nutrition at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Hall’s research revealed we produce more food to keep up with our bigger appetites, but he also found we’re wasting more.
“We were kinda shocked to see that the rate of increase of food supply was greater than the rate of increase of food consumption we calculated. Somewhere along the supply chain from the farm to the dinner table, that food was wasted.”
Kevin Hall estimates well more than one third of our food production goes to waste.
He says it’s not clear who’s to blame, but someone should find out because food production uses a lot of water and fuel.
Researchers say some companies bought renewable power because customers pushed them to. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
