Behind Big Oil’s Green Motivations

  • The Maryland Science Center is running a pilot project, renting out a handful of bright green battery powered cars to Baltimore residents and tourists. The cars use a battery that employs a special polymer film developed by Exxon Chemical. (Photo courtesy of the Maryland Science Center)

Some well known oil companies
are very publicly getting behind
alternative energy initiatives.
But are these serious efforts
or just a case of green-washing?
Tamara Keith tries
to get some answers:

Transcript

Some well known oil companies
are very publicly getting behind
alternative energy initiatives.
But are these serious efforts
or just a case of green-washing?
Tamara Keith tries
to get some answers:

The first thing oil giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron would
like us to know is that they’re not oil companies. They are energy
companies. So, they say, investing in biofuels, solar panels and
geothermal power really isn’t out of character… even if those things
only make up a fraction of their total business.

And I guess that’s how you end up with an electric car that says
“powered by Exxon Mobil” on its bumper.

Reiner: “So, you want to go take a look?”

Keith: “Yeah, sure.”

Vann Reiner is the CEO of the Maryland Science Center.
The center is running a pilot project, renting out a handful of
bright green battery powered cars to Baltimore residents and tourists.

Reiner: “Here’s the gas cap.”

Keith: “It’s an outlet.”
Reiner: “It’s an outlet, that’s right. And you see it’s 110 volt
15 amp – so household current.”

The cars use a battery that employs a special polymer film developed
by Exxon Chemical.

“So, you turn the key the way you normally would.”

(sound of car)

Exxon Mobil said it couldn’t make anyone available to be
interviewed for this story.

Reiner: “Nice job on acceleration.”

Keith: “Thank you.”

So I asked the science center’s Reiner what I wanted to ask
the folks at Exxon Mobil. Why in the world is an oil company
promoting an electric car? Isn’t that like working to put themselves
out of business?

“I see it as a technology company who has made a lot of money
in oil, no getting around that. But what else can you do? And
this is a way to insure their future, in my opinion. But I’m just
delighted that they chose us.”

Exxon Mobil also recently announced a 600-million dollar investment
in algae as a future biofuel – and the company is making sure we all
know about it with with newspaper and television ads.

“And they absorb CO2. So they help solve the greenhouse problem as well.
We’re making a big commitment to finding out just how much algae can help
to meet the fuel demands of the world.”

Still, Exxon Mobil is planning for oil, gas and coal to continue dominating
the world’s energy supply for at least the next 30 years.

Alex Yelland is with Chevron, and he says that’s what his company is projecting, too.

“Renewables is currently around 10 percent of the energy mix, and, in the
coming decades, that’s not expected to change a huge amount but from its
current state it’s relative state, it will grow significantly.”

Over the next 2 years, Yelland says Chevron plans to spend 2-point-7
billion dollars on renewable energy and energy efficiency. But Yelland
insists that kind of investment in energy sources other than oil isn’t
counterintuitive.

“For us, it’s about building a sound business for the future and
understanding where global demand is going and how we can meet that.”

“I think it definitely is smart PR.”

Edward Wu is with Cora Capital Advisors in New York. His firm specializes
in alternative energy investing. He says these companies are worth hundreds
of billions of dollars and, by comparison, their green investments are fairly small.

“They’re not going to replace oil, but I think they’re hoping that
they’ll be somewhat economically viable and at the same time definitely
serve a PR purpose right now.”

But Wu says the sprinkling of investments isn’t just about having something
to talk about in their ads.

“They want to have some biofuels in the mix. They want to have some battery
companies in the mix. They’re essentially dipping their toe in the water to
essentially hedge their bets.”

Because no one will want to be an oil company if, or perhaps we should say when,
oil stops dominating the energy landscape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

Eggs Layed in Whooper Recovery Effort

A whooping crane experiment in the Eastern U-S has had its first hatch of eggs from migrating birds. But humans had to help. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A whooping crane experiment in the Eastern U.S has had its first hatch
of eggs from migrating birds. But humans had to help. The GLRC’s
Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Several migrating cranes laid eggs this spring at the Necedah National
Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin, but some eggs broke. So, wildlife
officials scooped up two intact eggs and eventually sent them to a
wildlife center in Maryland. The eggs recently hatched. Wildlife
agencies say it’s a huge step for the effort to create a migrating and
reproducing flock of whoopers in the Eastern U.S.


Joan Garland of the International Crane Foundation says that’s even
though the chicks were not hatched in the wild.


“We did sort of have to help these eggs out a little bit. We did remove
them from the nests and raise them in incubators, but at least they were
produced and part of their life was there in the wild in the nests at
Necedah.”


Garland says the two chicks will probably be sent back to the wildlife
refuge this summer, and there, they’ll be taught to fly south.


For the GLRC I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Experts Hopeful for Whooper Eggs

Dozens of whooping cranes are heading north this spring, as an experiment continues to develop a migrating flock of the birds in the Eastern U.S. Wildlife experts hope this’ll be the year the effort will produce its first successful hatch of a crane egg. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Dozens of whooping cranes are heading north this spring, as an
experiment continues to develop a migrating flock of the birds in the
Eastern U.S. Wildlife experts hope this’ll be the year the effort will
produce its first successful hatch of a crane egg. The GLRC’s Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

About sixty of the endangered whooping cranes migrate between the
southeastern U.S. and northern states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
Last summer, for the first time, a few cranes paired off and produced
eggs, but the cranes didn’t stay near their nests and predators destroyed
the eggs.


Rachel Levin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says this year she’s
more optimistic the cranes will reproduce.


“We have cranes this year that are going to be five years old. Whooping
cranes reach sexual maturity between three and five years old. So, we
are hoping this year that we have cranes that will produce eggs and that are
maybe mature enough this year to stay with those eggs and do their
parental duty.”


One goal of the crane reintroduction project has been to have 25 adult
breeding pairs. For now the project will continue to add to the flock by
bringing in crane chicks from Maryland.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Cloning Trees to Preserve History

People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of
cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and
restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar
Charney reports:


Michigan’s Fort Mackinac is a military fortress from the American
Revolution. In the mid 1800’s, soldiers stationed there planted a row of eight
sugar maples lining the fort’s parade ground. But these trees are now old
and dying.


Phil Porter is a curator who’s worked at Fort Mackinac for over
30 years. He says he was sad and concerned that they would soon lose this
living link to the fort’s past. So he decided to have the trees cloned.


“We think that by cloning them, by going to that very high level of
reproducing what is there now we can do the most accurate job of
reproducing the environment, the right looking trees, and putting them
back in the same place.”


While the clones won’t look any different from a sugar maple seedling
bought at a nursery, keeping the genes of a historic tree alive through
cloning seems to appeal to people. There are tree cloning projects
underway in Massachusetts, Maryland, and even Australia to help replicate
historic trees people have a connection to.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Guide Educates Consumers on Food Additives

Americans are eating more and more processed foods. And that means that food labels are getting longer, as manufacturers add new ingredients to their products. But labels may not tell consumers much about those additives or how much the food was processed. To help educate themselves, consumers can now turn to a new guide to food ingredients. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel has more: