The Green House Effect  

Corporate greening seems to have achieved a strong foothold down here this year, with mainstream media channels like The Financial Review and the SMH / Age getting noticeably greener in recent months.

This weekend's Fin features a front page ad from Virgin Blue Green offering carbon neutral flights (I've no idea if the offsets are real or if this is just greenwashing but its a positive sign). The "Business Property" section features an article about "eco friendliness" now being a selling point for buildings, along with a state by state description of new green building rules. The eco friendly building articles notes the large order backlogs for water tanks and places in courses on saving energy, along with the increasing popularity of "green features" amongst buyers of residential housing.

Grist notes that the latest IPCC report is out, this one on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (pdf).

The natural world is already getting knocked around by climate change, the world's top climate experts said today. In the second of four reports being released this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group looked at the impacts of global warming, both present and projected, and said we can expect more big floods, droughts, wildfires, species extinctions, and mass migrations. Most vulnerable are the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small islands, and Asian river deltas, but the report also predicts flash floods for Europe and heat waves for North America. "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri.

The report was written by hundreds of scientists and reviewed by government officials; negotiations over the final wording got heated during an all-nighter last night (though you'd think they could've just scrawled "apocalypse" on some scratch paper and been done with it). Several scientists accused government negotiators of watering down the report, making it, in the words of one, "much less quantified and much vaguer and much less striking than it could have been." We're plenty struck, thanks.

TreeHugger also comments on the new IPCC report.

Under the header "Roasted World," We summarized prepublication coverage of the much anticipated second IPCC climate report, which would be detailing regional impacts of climate change . With that summary report out today, it turns out that some of the contributors got heated up from the all night editing process. Via the Washington Post:- "Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings." And to now one's surprise, "The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections." (Those of you who were around for the drafting of the Kyoto Treaty will recall OPEC nations objecting then as well.)

Bringing all this home for US readers (where the lesson most needs to sink in), we recommend this article from the LA Times, where they lay out the regional implications, drawing on a corroborating study that was just published:- "The driest periods of the last century — the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s — may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday. The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period." Peak Oil and Peak Objections are about to correlate with Peak Drought, leading to Peak Reality Facing. We are about to enter the "what should we do now" phase.

The US organisation Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reports "CLIMATE AND OCEAN SCIENTISTS PUT UNDER NEW SPEECH RESTRAINTS — Any Scientific Statements “of Official Interest” Must be Pre-Approved". I guess the idea that all scientific reports have to be redacted by some Republican commissar isn't new, but I was hoping the last election had halted this stuff for a while.

Federal climate, weather and marine scientists will be subject to new restrictions as to what they can say to the media or in public, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Under rules posted last week, these federal scientists must obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed “of official interest.”

On March 29, 2007, the Commerce Department posted a new administrative order governing “Public Communications.” This new order covers the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Commerce’s new order will become effective in 45 days and would repeal a more liberal “open science” policy adopted by NOAA on February 14, 2006.

Although couched in rhetoric about the need for “broad and open dissemination of research results [and] open exchange of scientific ideas,” the new order forbids agency scientists from communicating any relevant information, even if prepared and delivered on their own time as private citizens, which has not been approved by the official chain-of-command:

* Any “fundamental research communication” must “before the communication occurs” be submitted to and approved by the designated “head of the operating unit.” While the directive states that approval may not be withheld “based on policy, budget, or management implications of the research,” it does not define these terms and limits any appeal to within Commerce;
* National Weather Service employees are allowed only “as part of their routine responsibilities to communicate information about the weather to the public”; and
* Scientists must give the Commerce Department at least two weeks “advance notice” of any written, oral or audiovisual presentation prepared on their own time if it “is a matter of official interest to the Department because it relates to Department programs, policies or operations.”

“This ridiculous gag order ignores the First Amendment and disrespects the world-renowned professionals who work within Commerce agencies,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Under this policy, National Weather Service scientists can only give out name, rank, serial number and the temperature.”

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd is calling for an Australian version of the Stern report, noting the government keeps criticising the economic impact of freeing ourselves from fossil fuel dependency without even knowing if there is a cost.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd has called for an Australian version of the Stern Report to calculate the economic cost of climate change, following the release of the latest UN warning on climate change.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released in Brussels last night, giving the most alarming forecast yet about the consequences of climate change for the world. It predicts worsening drought conditions and water shortages for Australia over the next 20 to 50 years with the loss of the Great Barrier Reef within the next two decades. It also warns that as many as 711,000 Australian homes will be in peril from rising sea levels, and says vulnerable wildlife species could begin to disappear by 2030.

Mr Rudd said today Australia would suffer from economic and job losses as a direct result of climate change and that cost should be calculated. But this could be achieved only by an Australian global warming audit, similar to the influential report recently prepared for the British government by economist Sir Nicholas Stern, who recently visited Australia.

Mr Rudd told reporters the economic cost could only be assessed with the Australian equivalent of a Stern Report, which was Labor policy, but which the government had refused. "I can't understand why the government would not want to calculate the economic cost and the jobs costs of failing to act on climate change," he said. "We need to put numbers around that as well and that's why we need an Australian-Stern Report."

Mr Rudd says Labor's climate change policies are practical and include emissions trading, increasing renewable energies and electricity efficiency management. He also called for the government to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change, to "become part of the global network to deal with this global challenge". "By and large Mr Howard's government denies these plans because in their heart of hearts they are climate change sceptics and climate change deniers, their heads are in the sand they hope it'll just go away," he said.

One from TreeHugger I missed a couple of weeks back - the Spanish region of Navarra gets 70% of its power from wind and solar.

The region of Navarra, in Northeastern Spain, better known in the U.S. for the “running of the bulls” in Pamplona. But in this region, approximately 70% of the electricity comes from the wind and the sun. With no coal, oil or gas of its own, this mountainous region deliberately went for renewable energy in the late 1980s. The first wind farm was built in full view of the regional capital Pamplona, so that people could get used to it. Now, with some 1,100 windmills dotted all over Navarra, this tiny region is capable of generating more electricity from renewable sources than big EU countries like France or Poland. Navarra plans to reach 100% renewable energy generation by 2010.

Quoting Oana Lungescu (BBC News): “In a growing trend in Spain, the solar park is a co-operative, with 750 individual owners. The cost of a panel starts at 50,000 euros, but with a tax break from the regional government and a guaranteed annual income there is a long waiting list of willing buyers”.

See a video clip of this story here.

See also: Wind Power Is Spain's Top Energy Source This Week

Also at TreeHugger, a post on the world's largest thin-film solar power plant opening in Germany.

The largest thin-film solar power plant in the world has opened in Germany, dubbed the “Rote Jahne”. It was built by the contractor Juwi Solar, and it will have a total output capacity of six megawatts. It uses 90,000 solar modules to capture quite a bit of sunlight. Thin-film solar modules are cheaper than crystalline modules and produce more energy per unit of installed capacity. The thin-film cells were made by First Solar. The solar plant is built on a former military airfield, and its module surface area comprises approximately 16.5 acres.

The array will produce around 5.7 million kilowatt-hours of solar electricity every year, enough to power some 1,900 homes.

Juwi Solar has already started building an even larger 40-megawatt solar park, which will be comprised of 550,000 thin-film modules. That project is due to be finished by the end of 2009.

Technology Review has an article on "Materials That Reflect No Light", which would enable advances in solar cells and LED lighting.

Unwanted reflections limit the performance of light-based technologies, such as solar cells, camera lenses, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In solar cells, for example, reflections mean less light that can be converted into electricity. Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, NY, and semiconductor maker Crystal IS, in Green Island, NY, have developed a new type of nanostructured coating that can virtually eliminate reflections, potentially leading to dramatic improvements in optical devices. The work is published in the current issue of Nature Photonics.

The researchers showed that they can prevent almost all reflection of a wide range of wavelengths of light by "growing" nanoscale rods projected at specific angles from a surface. In contrast, conventional antireflective coatings work best only for specific colors, which is why, for example, eyeglasses with such coatings still show faint red or green reflections. Fred Schubert, professor of physics and electrical, computer, and systems engineering at RPI and one of the authors of the study, says that the material stops reflections from nearly all the colors of the visible spectrum, as well as some infrared light, and it also reduces reflections from light coming from more directions than conventional coatings do. As a result, he says, the total reflection is 10 times less than it is with current coatings.

Applied to a solar cell, the new coating would increase the amount of light absorbed by a few percentage points and convert it into electricity, Schubert says. A more remarkable 40 percent improvement could be seen in LEDs, he says, in which a large amount of light generated by a semiconductor is typically trapped inside the device by reflections. The work is part of a growing effort among researchers to alter the properties of materials, such as their optical properties, by controlling nanoscale structures. ...

Technology Review also has an article on "Cheap Nano Solar Cells" - using carbon nanotubes could help make nanoparticle-based solar cells more efficient and practical.

Researchers at University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, have demonstrated a way to significantly improve the efficiency of solar cells made using low-cost, readily available materials, including a chemical commonly used in paints.

The researchers added single-walled carbon nanotubes to a film made of titanium-dioxide nanoparticles, doubling the efficiency of converting ultraviolet light into electrons when compared with the performance of the nanoparticles alone. The solar cells could be used to make hydrogen for fuel cells directly from water or for producing electricity. Titanium oxide is a main ingredient in white paint.

The approach, developed by Notre Dame professor of chemistry and biochemistry Prashant Kamat and his colleagues, addresses one of the most significant limitations of solar cells based on nanoparticles. (See "Silicon and Sun.") Such cells are appealing because nanoparticles have a great potential for absorbing light and generating electrons. But so far, the efficiency of actual devices made of such nanoparticles has been considerably lower than that of conventional silicon solar cells. That's largely because it has proved difficult to harness the electrons that are generated to create a current.

Indeed, without the carbon nanotubes, electrons generated when light is absorbed by titanium-oxide particles have to jump from particle to particle to reach an electrode. Many never make it out to generate an electrical current. The carbon nanotubes "collect" the electrons and provide a more direct route to the electrode, improving the efficiency of the solar cells. ...

There is a report from New Zealand about a solar power breakthrough at Massey University (Kevin at Cryptogon reckons we'll never hear anything more of this one).

New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power. This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices.

The breakthrough is a development of the university's Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan. Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis. "This is a proof-of-concept cell," said researcher Wayne Campbell, pointing to a desktop demonstration model. "Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now."

The key to everything is the ability of the synthetic dyes to pass on the energy that reaches them - something that mere coloured water could not do. "We now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world," said the centre's director, Ashton Partridge. "It is the most efficient ever made. While others are doing related work, in this aspect we are the world leaders."

The development of the dyes has taken about 10 years and was accomplished with funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand for fundamental work and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the later stages. Now the team is seeking extra funding to go commercial. "This particular technology does not require the large infrastructure required for silicon chips and the like," said Professor Partridge. It lends itself to being taken up by local and New Zealand industries.

Other dyes being tested in the cells are based on haemoglobin, the compound that gives blood its colour. Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates. They are also more environmentally friendly because they are made from titanium dioxide - an abundant and non-toxic, white mineral available from New Zealand's black sand. Titanium dioxide is used already in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics. "The refining of silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy- hungry and very expensive," he said.

Professor Partridge said the next step was to take the dyes and incorporate them in roofing materials, tinted window glass and wall panels where they could generate electricity for home owners. The aim was to develop a solar cell that could convert as much sunlight as possible to electricity. "The energy that reaches Earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year."

Grist has a post on "the pro-enviro solution that dare not speak its name" (in the US anyway) - fast electric rail transport.

"Because if your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down their throats."

Take electrified rail, for instance. Here's a sad report from Dean Baker of The American Prospect, one of the best reporters going today:

I was shocked to discover in a conversation with a congressional staffer that rebuilding the country's train system is a topic that is strictly verboten on Capitol Hill. I was reminded of this when I read that a French train had set a new speed record of 357 miles per hour. Trains are far more fuel efficient than planes. Even at much slower speeds than this new French train, service across the Northeast and between the Midwest and Northeast can be very time competitive with air travel, after factoring in travel times to and from airports and security searches. It is remarkable that politicians don't even have trains on their radar screens.

And, if you haven't seen the video of what an electrified train can do, check this out. ...

Ecorazzi has a post on the new Leonardo Di Caprio film "The 11th Hour". Judging by the list of 71 people interviewed for the film it should raise some interesting ideas.

Vanity Fair has released online some excerpts from Leonardo DiCaprio’s upcoming eco-documentary, The 11th Hour. The release coincides with the latest May green issue hitting newsstands today in New York and LA, and nationally on the 8th.

As we mentioned earlier, it’s great to see some additional details on the film coming to light. The production process has taken several years and there have been few updates throughout. According to the article,

“The 11th Hour, a feature documentary on environmental ills and possible cures, a kind of state-of-the-earth address with gorgeous pictures and eloquent experts, which DiCaprio is producing, co-writing, and narrating. As he says in this remarkable film, as hopeful as it is alarming, ‘So, we find ourselves on the brink.’ On the brink of what, it is made plain, is up to us.”

Vanity Fair then pulls excerpts in the form of quotes from various people featured throughout the film. Included are Paul Hawken, Herman Daly, David Suzuki, Stephen Schneider, William McDonough and several others. I especially dig this quote from DiCaprio,

“It’s clear humans have had a devastating impact on our planet’s ecological web of life. Because we’ve waited, because we’ve turned our backs on nature’s warning signs, and because our political and corporate leaders have consistently ignored the overwhelming scientific evidence, the challenges we face are that much more difficult. We are in the environmental age whether we like it or not.”

In an advanced screening of an episode of THE GREEN that I was watching last night, Laurie David said something similar. “We are all environmentalists. Everyone loves to go to the beach, walk through the woods. Each of us is a part of the solution,” she said.

The Environmental Age. I like the sound of that.

Some other quotes from the Vanity Fair article:

The problem that confronts us is that every living system in the biosphere is in decline and the rate of decline is accelerating. There isn't one peer-reviewed scientific article that's been published in the last 20 years that contradicts that statement. Living systems are coral reefs. They're our climatic stability, forest cover, the oceans themselves, aquifers, water, the conditions of the soil, biodiversity. They go on and on as they get more specific. But the fact is, there isn't one living system that is stable or is improving. And those living systems provide the basis for all life. —Paul Hawken, environmentalist and entrepreneur.

I think the most basic thing to understand about our global economic system is that it's a subsystem. The larger system is the biosphere, and the subsystem is the economy. The problem, of course, is that our subsystem, the economy, is geared for growth; it's all set up to grow, to expand. Whereas the parent system doesn't grow; it remains the same size. So, as the economy grows, it displaces, it encroaches upon the biosphere, and this is the fundamental cost of economic growth. It's what you give up when you expand. You give up what used to be there. —Herman Daly, ecological economist.

There's a more fundamental problem, and that is, as the world economy has expanded relative to the size of the earth itself, we have reached the point where economic activity often does a lot of damage. What we need to recognize is that, in many cases now, the indirect costs of the products, the goods, and the services we buy may be greater than the direct costs. —Lester Brown, founder, Earth Policy Institute.

Economists don't include all of the things that nature does for us for nothing. Some technologies would never be able to do what nature does. For example, pollinating all of the flowering plants. What would it cost us to take carbon dioxide out of the air and put oxygen back in, which all the green things do for us for nothing? It's possible to do a crude estimate of what it would cost us to replace nature. Well, it turns out, [one researcher] estimated it would cost us $35 trillion a year to do what nature is doing for us for nothing. Now to put that in perspective. If you had added up all of the annual economies of all the countries in the world at that time, it would come to $18 trillion. So, nature is doing twice as much service for us as the economies of the world. And in the madness of conventional economics, this is not in the equation. —David Suzuki, geneticist and broadcaster.

Somehow in the last few decades in business school, they were trained that the object of their business is growth, as if that were an end. It's not an end, it's a means. And if we flip the ends and means, then we can get the end back, quality of life. We have to look at the contradictions because the wrong kind of growth reduces our quality of life, and we have to take that back. —Stephen Schneider, climatologist.

I think the industrial system has to be re-invented. Today the throughput of the industrial system, from mine and wellhead to finished product, ends up in a landfill or incinerator. For every truckload of product with lasting value, 32 truckloads of waste are produced. That's mind-boggling, but it's true. So we have a system that is a waste-making system. And clearly we cannot continue to dig up the earth and turn it to waste. —Ray Anderson, industrial engineer and businessman.

Some people suggest that in order to live sustainably we have to go out in the woods and put on animal skins and live on roots and berries. And the simple reality is that we do have technology. The question is, how can we use our understanding of science and our understanding of technology along with our understanding of culture, and how culture changes, to create a culture that will interact with science and with the world around us in a sustainable fashion? —Thom Hartmann, broadcaster, educator, businessman.

The great thing about the dilemma we're in is that we get to reimagine every single thing we do. In other words, there isn't one single thing that we make that doesn't require a complete remake. And so there are two ways of looking at that. One is like: Oh my gosh, what a big burden. The other way to look at it, which is the way I prefer, is: What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change this world. —Paul Hawken

We're at a point in our history, with 6.4 billion of us, that we have to imagine what it would be like to redesign design itself, see design as the first signal of human intention, and realize that we need new intentions for our future where materials are seen as things that are highly valuable and need to go in closed cycles—what we call cradle to cradle, instead of cradle to grave. And we have to agree that energy needs to come from renewable sources, principally the sun, and that water needs to be clean and healthy as it comes in and out of the system, and that we should treat each other with justice and fairness. So, the design itself changes from mass production of things that are essentially destructive to mass utilization of things that are inherently assets instead of liabilities. —William McDonough, architect and designer.

How we make things in our industrial process is a 180-degree difference from how life makes things. Look at how we make, for instance, Kevlar, which is our toughest material. We take petroleum, we heat it up to about 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, we boil it in sulfuric acid, and then we pull it out under enormous pressures. Now, imagine us making our bones or our teeth, or imagine an abalone making a shell. Abalones can't afford to heat it up to really high temperatures or do pressures or do chemical baths, so they've found a different way. Now take the spider. This beautiful orb-weaver spider is basically taking flies and crickets and transforming them in water in the abdomen and what comes out is this material that's five times stronger ounce for ounce than steel. Silently, in water, at room temp. I mean, this is master chemistry, and this is manufacturing of the future, hopefully. And there are actually people who are now trying to mimic the recipes of these organisms. Beautiful architecture and incredible manufacturing and we're starting to learn how to mimic that. —Janine Benyus, co-founder, the Biomimicry Guild.

If we think about the tree as a design, it's something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides a habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy, makes complex sugars and food, creates micro-climates, self-replicates. So, what would it be like to design a building like a tree? What would it be like to design a city like a forest? So what would a building be like if it were photosynthetic? What if it took solar energy and converted it to productive and delightful use? —William McDonough

This country can move awfully fast, if it wants to. Keep in mind that after December 7, 1941, Roosevelt went to Jimmy Byrnes and said, You're my deputy president for mobilizing the economy. Anybody crosses you, they cross me. Within six months, Detroit was completely retooled, not making cars anymore, making military trucks, tanks, fighter aircraft, and in three years and eight months from the beginning of that war, we had mobilized, we had defeated imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, together with the British and our other allies, and had begun demobilization. Three years and eight months. —R. James Woolsey, former director of the C.I.A.

And to close, here's a TED talk from E.O. Wilson, warning about the HIPPO juggernaut.

As EO Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; and yet we're steadily, methodically, vigorously destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:21)