Germ

Breathe in. Do you taste that? No?

Exactly.

The summer of 2014 has been a tentative triumph for GTA air quality. With the season’s end in sight, no smog advisories have been issued for the city so far – or anywhere else in Ontario, for that matter.

A new University of Toronto-led study helps explain why. The authors demonstrate remarkable improvements in regional air pollution since 2000. But that success is also a tentative one.

The good news: concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides, two precursor pollutants for smog, are trending downwards. The bad news: ozone, another smog component, persists at levels that violate Canada-wide standards. And while improved air quality has already translated into meaningful public health gains, this summer our lungs were probably saved by cool temperatures, an increasingly less likely scenario thanks to global climate change.

“We think that we are just reaching the point where we are going to start seeing improvements as a result of decreasing emissions, but the wild card is always the weather,” says Jennifer Murphy, an atmospheric chemist at U of T and the study’s lead author.

Smog is the result of a complicated reaction between VOCs and nitrogen oxides, emitted primarily by cars and trucks, and sunlight. They combine to form ground-level ozone, a secondary pollutant.

According to the U of T study, levels of both have declined precipitously since 2000. So if the precursor chemical components for ozone have decreased, why hasn’t ozone itself?

“That’s the frustrating and complicated thing,” says Murphy. Because of the nature of the reactions involved, “it’s not as though if you cut the ingredients in half, you get a cake that is half as big.” We are emitting fewer primary pollutants than before, but they are reacting in the atmosphere more quickly, so ozone levels have not yet turned the corner.

Murphy believes they soon will. But weather can trump everything. The years from 2008 to 2011 had consistently lower ozone levels than in previous years, but 2012, a hot and dry year, had some of the highest summertime ozone concentrations recorded and eight smog advisories.

“Even though we’ve improved the chemistry so much, if we had another hot summer, then we would still expect to have these problems. You can’t just have one summer with bad weather and say there’s no smog in Toronto anymore,” says Murphy.

Experts credit the closure of coal-fired power plants and initiatives like Drive Clean with reductions of primary pollutants.

“It does go to show a lot of the policy changes that have taken place to help with that (are working),” says Gabriella Kalapos, executive director of the Clean Air Partnership.

But Kalapos warns against complacency because of the steep health costs of bad air. In 2004, there were 1,700 premature deaths and 6,000 hospitalizations in Toronto as a result of poor air quality. This year, those numbers dropped to 1,300 and 3,550, respectively.

“It’s very good, but the numbers are still high,” says Monica Campbell, director of healthy public policy with Toronto Public Health.

Smog advisories have been issued as late as October, so it’s not time to start celebrating quite yet.

Breathe in. Do you taste that? No?

Exactly.

The summer of 2014 has been a tentative triumph for GTA air quality. With the season’s end in sight, no smog advisories have been issued for the city so far – or anywhere else in Ontario, for that matter.

A new University of Toronto-led study helps explain why. The authors demonstrate remarkable improvements in regional air pollution since 2000. But that success is also a tentative one.

The good news: concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides, two precursor pollutants for smog, are trending downwards. The bad news: ozone, another smog component, persists at levels that violate Canada-wide standards. And while improved air quality has already translated into meaningful public health gains, this summer our lungs were probably saved by cool temperatures, an increasingly less likely scenario thanks to global climate change.

“We think that we are just reaching the point where we are going to start seeing improvements as a result of decreasing emissions, but the wild card is always the weather,” says Jennifer Murphy, an atmospheric chemist at U of T and the study’s lead author.

Smog is the result of a complicated reaction between VOCs and nitrogen oxides, emitted primarily by cars and trucks, and sunlight. They combine to form ground-level ozone, a secondary pollutant.

According to the U of T study, levels of both have declined precipitously since 2000. So if the precursor chemical components for ozone have decreased, why hasn’t ozone itself?

“That’s the frustrating and complicated thing,” says Murphy. Because of the nature of the reactions involved, “it’s not as though if you cut the ingredients in half, you get a cake that is half as big.” We are emitting fewer primary pollutants than before, but they are reacting in the atmosphere more quickly, so ozone levels have not yet turned the corner.

Murphy believes they soon will. But weather can trump everything. The years from 2008 to 2011 had consistently lower ozone levels than in previous years, but 2012, a hot and dry year, had some of the highest summertime ozone concentrations recorded and eight smog advisories.

“Even though we’ve improved the chemistry so much, if we had another hot summer, then we would still expect to have these problems. You can’t just have one summer with bad weather and say there’s no smog in Toronto anymore,” says Murphy.

Experts credit the closure of coal-fired power plants and initiatives like Drive Clean with reductions of primary pollutants.

“It does go to show a lot of the policy changes that have taken place to help with that (are working),” says Gabriella Kalapos, executive director of the Clean Air Partnership.

But Kalapos warns against complacency because of the steep health costs of bad air. In 2004, there were 1,700 premature deaths and 6,000 hospitalizations in Toronto as a result of poor air quality. This year, those numbers dropped to 1,300 and 3,550, respectively.

“It’s very good, but the numbers are still high,” says Monica Campbell, director of healthy public policy with Toronto Public Health.

Smog advisories have been issued as late as October, so it’s not time to start celebrating quite yet.

In Beijing, China banned 2.5 million cars from driving for 2 weeks to get this beautiful blue sky for a World War II commemorative parade. As soon as the parade was over, the ban was lifted, and the blue vanished within 24 hours.

Photo via CNN, where there’s a longer writeup by the guys in their Beijing bureau.

It worked. On the morning of the parade, the air quality index (AQI) — an international standard for measuring the severity of air pollution — dipped to a pristine 17 out of 500, signifying very healthy air.

Excited Beijingers coined the unusually blue skies “parade blue.”

But now the cars are back and the city is back to “Beijing gray.”

Friday’s AQI shot up past 160 in parts of the city, rated “unhealthy”.

[HT: Gabe Klein]

What’s 23 feet tall, eats smog, and makes jewelry for fun?

In Rotterdam this week, the designer Daan Roosegaarde is showing off the result of three years of research and development: The largest air purifier ever built. It’s a tower that scrubs the pollution from more than 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour-and then condenses those fine particles of smog into tiny “gem stones” that can be embedded in rings, cufflinks, and more.

Each stone is roughly equivalent to cleaning 1,000 cubic meters of air-so you’re literally wearing the pollution that once hung in the air around Roosegaarde’s so-called Smog Free Tower. In the designer’s words, buying a ring means “you donate a thousand cubic meters of clean air to the city where the Smog Free Tower is.”

The project has been in the offing for a long time. We wrote about the idea more than two years ago when the Dutch designer first publicly announced the project, which was originally planned for Beijing after the city’s mayor endorsed the idea. Roosegaarde and his team have spent the past few years developing the first prototype in Rotterdam, where it was unveiled this month. “It’s really weird that we accept [pollution] as something normal, and take it for granted,” Roosegaarde explains.

The white, oblong tower-slatted with louvres protecting its electronic innards-will still eventually make its way to Beijing, which of course is notorious for its smog. It’ll also make stops in Mumbai and Paris, and possibly other cities (you can suggest your own using the project’s hashtag on Twitter).

To fund the travel, the studio launched a Kickstarter campaign where you can buy jewelry and cufflinks made with its tiny smog gems-which, theoretically, would eventually become diamonds if they were compressed with much more extreme pressure.

But for now, the tower sits on a patch of grass next to Roosegaarde’s studio in Rotterdam, whose mayor and local government supported the project with grant money.

The process taking place inside its walls is powered by 1,400 watts of sustainable energy, which is comparable to a water boiler, and the studio says it hopes to one day integrate solar PVs into the design to power the process-which works not so differently than some ionic air purifiers. Roosegaarde explains:

By charging the Smog Free Tower with a small positive current, an electrode will send positive ions into the air. These ions will attach themselves to fine dust particles. A negatively charged surface -the counter electrode- will then draw the positive ions in, together with the fine dust particles. The fine dust that would normally harm us, is collected together with the ions and stored inside of the tower. This technology manages to capture ultra-fine smog particles which regular filter systems fail to do.

Now that the working prototype is up and running, the next step is figuring out how to bring it to other cities-including the city that started it all, Beijing. The team’s Kickstarter, where the studio is raising funds for another eight days, is closing in on doubling its goal-you can get your own smog gems by donating here.

That cash will go directly to transporting the tower, publicizing the design in cities around the world. Eventually, that attention could lead to copycats and spin-off designs-one day, these ungainly white tower might be fixtures in our parks and playgrounds.

That we need super-sized air purifiers to live in super-polluted cities is certainly a pretty grim prospect. But at least someone is thinking hard about not only how to clean the air, but how to get people excited about funding that process.

Contact the author at [email protected].

By Megan Darby Building compact, connected and efficient cities could save 3.7 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2030 – more than India’s carbon footprint.

Avoiding wasteful urban sprawl also brings big energy cost savings, worth US$16.6 trillion worldwide in the period to 2050 – a fifth of world GDP in nominal terms.

Those are the conclusions of the latest New Climate Economy report, part of a series to show the economic benefits of climate action.

It calls for a $1 billion public finance package to green the world’s 500 largest cities, in line with global efforts to decarbonise the economy.

The first thing a mayor should think of is public transport, said Nick Godfrey, urban development expert at the NCE.

“Getting transport right, particularly in fast-growing cities at an early stage, shapes the entire urban form of a city.”

Analysis: How can cities influence a global climate deal in Paris?

That could involve bus rapid transit (BRT) systems – priority bus routes that are relatively cheap to set up.

With the urban population growing by 1.4 million a week, mostly in the developing world, such schemes are in urgent demand.

A system installed in Johannesburg had net benefits of nearly US$900 million, according to analysis by WRI’s Embarq project. The bulk of that came from shortened travel times and better road safety, with CO2 cuts a bonus.

Other low carbon opportunities are in energy efficient buildings and waste disposal.

The extra upfront cost of investing in greener options is relatively small, Godfrey told RTCC, at less than 5%. And the operational savings are “huge”.

Michael Bloomberg, in his role as UN climate and cities envoy, last September launched an initiative to spur urban leaders into action.

To date, 136 cities representing 3.1% of the world population have signed up to the Compact of Mayors, committing to cut their carbon footprints.

The scheme’s partner organisations C40, ICLEI and UCLG collectively reach 2,000 cities.

Report: Cities face ‘huge’ finance gap for climate-friendly infrastructure

Amanda Eichel, who is working with Bloomberg on the programme, is hoping to get hundreds of mayors to Paris this December.

While it will be national negotiators working to strike a global carbon-cutting pact, cities are “a critical part of the climate solution,” she said.

Particularly in the next five years, before a new treaty kicks in, investment decisions by urban planners will make a big difference.

Welcoming the NCE report, Eichel added: “This is actually the first time we have been able to show there is a strong economic argument for cities to take action.”

Attracting finance is a stumbling block. A 2013 World Bank study found only 4% of the 500 biggest cities in the developing world were able to raise capital on international markets.

By tightening up on tax collection and making robust business cases, they can improve their financial credibility.

Kampala in Uganda, for example, increased its revenues 86% in a year and was awarded an A credit rating in May.

“One of the reasons cities often have problems with creditworthiness is a lack of data on investability of sustainable infrastructure,” said Eichel. “A core driver around the Compact of Mayors is starting to gather this kind of data in one place.”

Putting cities on a course of smart growth – with expanded public transit, energy-saving buildings, and better waste management – could save as much as $22tn and avoid the equivalent in carbon pollution of India’s entire annual output of greenhouse gasses, according to leading economists.

The Global Commission on Climate and Economy, an independent initiative by former finance ministers and leading research institutions from Britain and six other countries, found climate-smart cities would spur economic growth and a better quality of life – at the same time as cutting carbon pollution.

If national governments back those efforts, the savings on transport, buildings, and waste disposal could reach up to $22tn ($14tn) by 2050, the researchers found. By 2030, those efforts would avoid the equivalent of 3.7 gigatonnes a year – more than India’s current greenhouse gas emissions, the report found.

The finding upends the notion that it is too expensive to do anything about climate change – or that such efforts would make little real difference. Not true, said the researchers.

“There is now increasing evidence that emissions can decrease while economies continue to grow,” said Seth Schultz, a researcher for the C40 climate leadership group who consulted on the report.

“Becoming more sustainable and putting the world – specifically cities – on a low carbon trajectory is actually feasible and good economics.”

The report called on the world’s leading cities to commit to low carbon development strategies by 2020.

The findings, were released as the United Nations and environmental groups try to spur greater action on climate change ahead of critical negotiations in Paris at the end of the year.

The Paris meeting is seen as a linchpin of efforts to hold warming to 2C by moving the global economy away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Related: Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks

The UN concedes the climate commitments to date fall far short of the 2C goal. But the strategies outlined in the report – some of which are being put into place already – would on their own make up about 20% of that gap, said Amanda Eichel of Bloomberg Philanthropies who also consulted on the report.

Two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, with Africa’s urban population growing at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

The right choices now, in terms of long-term planning for urban development and transport, could improve people’s lives and fight climate change, the report found.

Investing in public transport would make the biggest immediate difference, the report found. Air pollution is already choking the sprawling cities of India and China. Traffic jams and accidents are taking a toll on the local economy in cities from Cairo to Sao Paulo.

But building bus lanes, such as those rolling out in Buenos Aires, could cut commuting time by up to 50%, the report said.

Green building standards could cut electricity use, reduce heat island effects, and reduce demand for water. In waste management, biogas from waste could be harnessed as fuel to provide electricity to communities, as was already being done by Lagos in Nigeria and other cities.

ASPEN – Boulder, it’s your move.

Aspen has become only the third U.S. city to be entirely run on renewable energy, according to the Aspen Times. The other two cities? Burlington, Vermont and Greensburg, Kansas.

The Pitkin County resort town got the designation after signing a contract with wholesale electric energy provider Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.

Before that, it was at 75 to 80 percent renewable energy – and had decided 10 years ago to make that 100 percent.

Aspen eliminated using a coal a while back, replacing that with wind power provided by four farms in Nebraska and South Dakota. The Aspen Times reports it also uses energy from Ruedi Reservoir, Maroon Creek and Ridgway Reservoir.

(© 2015 KUSA)

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Back in January, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) made a promise. His state, he said, would pursue a new package of climate goals that are the most ambitious in the nation (and among the most ambitious in the world). California was already a leader in efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy. Brown pledged to go further. By 2030, he declared, California would double the energy efficiency of state buildings; get half its electricity from renewables; and halve consumption of gasoline by cars and trucks.

At the time, all those nice-sounding goals were just words in a speech. But they could very soon become the law of the land. The state legislature is currently considering several bills (SB 350 is the most important) that would codify Brown’s climate agenda. The legislation is widely expected to pass before the end of the legislative session next Friday, but not without a fight from the state’s powerful oil lobby.

Before we get into the bills themselves, let’s talk about California. Believe it or not, the state where America fell in love with cars and highways is now leading the nation, and the world, when it comes to climate action. And that matters, because California, the world’s seventh-largest economy, is a world-class emitter of greenhouse gases. It ranks second for state emissions, behind Texas, and if it were its own nation, it would rank 20th globally, right between Italy and Spain. Still, it’s remarkably clean for its size: On a per-capita basis, it ranks 45th among US states and 38th when compared with countries around the world. (Below, the bars represent total emissions and the dots represent per-capita emissions.)

California is also special because of how much of its emissions come from road transportation (cars, trucks, buses, etc.), which is why a major reduction in gasoline use would be so significant. Nationally, just 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation; in California, it’s 37 percent. Another way to crunch those numbers: One-tenth of the nation’s road transport emissions come from California. Unsurprisingly, California is also the biggest consumer of gasoline, accounting for one-tenth of the national gas market. As a result, it also has an infamously aggressive oil lobby-more on that in a minute.

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” Tim O’Connor said.

California first stepped onto the national climate stage back in 2006 during the Arnold Schwarzenegger administration, with the passage of AB32, known as the Global Warming Solutions Act. That law sets a target of reducing the state’s economy-wide carbon footprint to 1990 levels by 2020. Since the bill was enacted, gasoline consumption in the state is down 9 percent-double the nationwide decline. Total carbon emissions are also down, while GDP and population are both on the rise. Roll those things together and you get the most impressive number: The carbon intensity of the state’s economy (that is, emissions per unit of GDP) is down 28 percent. The upshot is that California has become a proving ground for the notion that strong economic growth and climate action can go hand in hand:

That’s where the current bills come in. SB 350 would bring the state’s gasoline consumption down to about where Florida’s is now, while setting new targets for clean energy and energy efficiency projects. There’s also SB32, which would build on Schwarzenegger’s targets and require the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 (to meet that target, emissions have to start falling about five times faster than they currently are). That would be the most aggressive state target in the country; nationally, the furthest President Barack Obama has gone is to aim for a 26-28 percent reduction by 2025 (and that’s not enshrined in law, either). Both bills passed the state Senate in June by a wide margin; they’re due for a vote in the Assembly within the coming week. If they pass, they’ll head to Brown’s desk for a signature.

Neither bill includes specific prescriptions for how to meet the targets. Those are left to the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB), which would be required to turn in an enforcement plan by 2017. The gas consumption target would likely require some combination of new fuel efficiency standards for cars, incentives for alternative fuels and biofuels, cooperation with local planning agencies to improve public transit and make communities less car-reliant, and a push to get people to buy more electric vehicles. (California is already home to half of the roughly 174,000 electric vehicles on the road in the United States.)

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” said Tim O’Connor, director of California policy for the Environmental Defense Fund. “This is how California can really shake up the national conversation on climate.”

The oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest group in Sacramento.

Combined, these efforts are expected to create up to half a million jobs, according to a recent University of California-Berkeley study, and draw billions in clean tech investments (for which California is already the undisputed national champ). The bills’ supporters in the California capitol also say they will save millions of dollars in traffic-related public health costs and result in reduced energy bills.

The bills’ other supporters include Obama; both the state’s US senators and a majority of its congressional delegation; and a coalition of California businesses, large and small. But they also have some powerful enemies who are pushing back hard.

Because of the state’s share of the gasoline market, and its robust oil and gas production industry, the oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest in Sacramento. The biggest group, the Western States Petroleum Association, spent $8.9 million on lobbying last year. Now, Californians are getting blitzed by ads like the one below, from the so-called California Drivers Alliance (backed by WSPA, and representing “fuel users & providers”). The ad claims SB 350 will lead to gas rationing and is all about “limiting how far we can drive” and “penalizing drivers for using too much gas.” The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), called the ad “absurd” and “fear-mongering.”

“There’s a significant amount of inertia protecting the industry,” O’Connor said. “The lobby is putting its aim right at the center, at swing moderates” in the Assembly.

We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out. But California has a strong history of leadership on climate policies-including carbon trading programs (it created the nation’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade market in 2012) and clean vehicle standards-so the odds are pretty good.

“The governor has put his reputation on the line,” O’Connor said. “It’s hard to imagine 350 won’t pass.”

A startling decoupling of grid-supplied electricity and economic growth has occurred in Australia over the past few years.

Since peaking in 2009, electricity demand in the Australian National Electricity Market has fallen by 7.5 percent while Australian GDP has expanded by about 16 percent.

What this goes to show is that economic growth can-and has-proceeded without having to rely on coal-fired electricity.

Falling demand for grid-supplied electricity has been driven in part by less appetite from energy-intensive industries (in particular by shutdowns of aluminium smelters in New South Wales and Victoria) but also by energy-efficiency advances and growth in rooftop solar installations.

Australia as a whole is just short of 15 percent solar penetration already-plenty of room still to grow but the uptake has been remarkable. The state of South Australia will soon reach 25 percent penetration while the Queensland city of Brisbane has achieved 40 percent penetration. Meanwhile, average rooftop solar system sizes continue to expand, growing from about 4.5 kilowatts earlier this year to 4.84 kilowatts in recent months.

WHY THE BOOM IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ROOFTOP SOLAR?

Much of it can be attributed directly to an exponential increase in retail electricity prices. Those prices in turn are tied to ‘gold-plating’ of the networks, that is, utilities’ pouring money into the grid as a way to ensure they continue to make money.

The divergence in retail and wholesale pricing is nothing short of extraordinary. Chart 1 here how retail electricity prices in the state of Victoria have risen 195 percent over the past 16 years -in stark contrast to the 56 percent increase to the consumer price index over the same period. Wholesale prices have actually fallen over the same period of time.

The advent of electricity storage will only accelerate these trends, especially the installation of rooftop solar over the medium term. AGL Energy, one of the major Australian utilities, recently rolled out a solar battery-package offering, although the price is too high to drive significant take-up in the short term.

(On my house, for example, I can get a 4-kilowatt solar system fully installed for $A5,757 with a payback period of approximately five years while what AGL is offering-a 7.2-kilowatt battery-would have an installed cost of $14,289 and a payback period of approximately 8.5 years.)

As new battery products hit the market-lithium and flow batteries, for instance-and as scale economies drive prices down, storage costs will decline rapidly. History is a guide on this point. Since 2009, photovoltaic panel and systems prices haves fallen by about 25 percent annually in Australia.

Battery-storage costs will most likely follow a similar trajectory. As shown in the Chart 2 and Chart 3, AEMO forecasts strong growth in rooftop solar uptake, and expects battery storage installations to take off. Our guess is that these forecasts, as with many new technologies, will prove too conservative.

What does all this mean for Australia’s electricity market?

It means, in part, that demand for grid-supplied electricity from commercial-and particularly from residential customers-will probably continue to fall, thereby putting further pressure on coal-fired electricity-generator profits.

And it means that the increasing risk of stranded assets calls for the development of a long-term national electricity-sector transition plan. Such a plan, done right, would address vital issues that include network stability, reducing grid overinvestment, decarbonization and power plant site rehabilitation.

Tim King is IEEFA’s director of energy policy, Australasia.

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Solar ready to thrive without subsidy, says US Energy Secretary

02. September 2015 | Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends | By: Ian Clover

Ernest Moniz says the Obama administration backs Democrats’ calls for an extension of the Federal ITC, but stresses the solar industry will grow even without further subsidy.

The solar industry in the U.S. is primed to grow and survive even without the need for subsidy support, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said this week.

With the price of solar having fallen dramatically over the past few years, Moniz believes that the cost of electricity from rooftop solar arrays could fall to $0.06/kWh in some U.S. states very soon – a situation that would make solar “extremely competitive” with fossil fuel-based power generation sources.

Democrats in Congress are pulling hard for an extension of the Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which currently stands at 30% until January 1, 2017.

However, despite the Obama administration fully backing the goal of extending that 30% ITC further, Moniz is nevertheless sanguine about solar’s ability to survive free from subsidies.

“I certainly see solar growing, even without subsidy,” Moniz said. “The cost reductions have been incredible for the solar industry, making for an improved value proposition in many contexts.”

The Obama administration is in favor of supporting the extension of the ITC indefinitely, but a Republican-controlled Congress is likely to throw up roadblocks to stop that from happening. The issue, however, is not as simple as Democrats being in favor of renewables and Republicans in opposition – the growth of the wind industry has been rooted in many red states, prompting support for further subsidy support among Republicans in Congress.

pv magazine has explored this issue in dept in the September edition of the magazine. You can read more here.

Fast Company

Photo courtesy of Fast Company.

New York City seems like it would be a difficult place to build a solar installation. But with so many buildings packed into a small area, the rooftops offer seemingly limitless potential.

A startup called Mapdwell, previously a Fast Company Innovation By Design award winner, has calculated how much.

Using its 3-D modeling and visualization technology combined with aerial data, it looks at more than one million buildings in New York City and identifies 11 gigawatts of “high yield photovoltaic potential” that could deliver over 13 million megawatt-hours per year. For those unfamiliar with energy terms like those, that’s equal to powering 1.2 million homes while offsetting the carbon emissions equivalent to planting more than 185 million trees, or $40 billion in business potential.

…

Mapdwell, a company that spun out of MIT, has launched Solar System so far in nine cities, including Boston, Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado.

…

Read the full article in Fast Company.

*Mapdwell has just launched in San Francisco, as well. You can read more about Mapdwell in the Autumn 2013 issue of Energy Futures.

Here are some of the stories we’re reading this morning.

Arizona Daily Sun: Regulators Want Utilities to Keep Money Out of Campaigns

Two state utility regulators want the Arizona Corporation Commission to adopt a formal policy urging utilities to stay out of future races for the panel.

And if the request doesn’t stop the money, they may seek an audit of affected companies to find out exactly how they’re spending their money on politics.

In pushing the plan, Chairwoman Susan Bitter Smith and member Bob Burns cited media reports of the apparent involvement of Arizona Public Service and Pinnacle West Capital Corp., its parent, in trying to elect two specific Republicans in the 2014 race by funneling money through outside groups.

SF Gate: PG&E Plan Would Hit Solar Homes Harder Than Previously Thought

California’s utility companies have proposed making solar power less financially attractive to homeowners, now that so many are generating their own electricity and cutting their monthly bills. Now it appears that for customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., those changes could have a bigger impact than initially thought.

On Aug. 3, PG&E and the state’s other big utility companies proposed changing the state’s financial incentives for people who install solar panels on their roofs. On Thursday, however, the San Francisco utility refined its estimates. Some solar homeowners who take aggressive steps to cut their energy use and install batteries connected to their solar arrays would end up paying $13 more per month than they would under today’s rules.

Financial Times: Eni Discovers ‘Supergiant’ Gasfield Near Egypt

Italian energy group Eni has discovered what it says is a “supergiant” gasfield off the coast of Egypt, the largest ever found in the Mediterranean Sea and which could provide a much-needed boost for the country’s economy.

Eni, one of Europe’s biggest oil and gas companies, said on Sunday that the Zohr discovery “could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds” and would play a “major” role in meeting Egypt’s natural gas demand for decades once fully developed.

Mint: WTO Rules Against India in Solar Panels Dispute With the U.S.

A World Trade Organization panel has ruled against India in a dispute raised by the U.S. over the country’s solar power program, requiring the government to offer a level playing field to both foreign and domestic manufacturers of solar panels.

India is likely to appeal against the dispute settlement panel’s ruling, which could give it a two-year breather to implement the program.

The commerce ministry received the ruling last week, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Boulder Weekly: U.S. and India Compete to Have the Largest Solar Power Field in the World

The U.S. Navy is investing in what will be the largest solar farm in the world in order to provide power for 14 of its bases.

In the same week that the U.S. Navy disclosed its plans, the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh announced it was to construct a 750-megawatt plant (1 megawatt is roughly enough to supply 1,000 typical British homes) on barren, government-owned land in the country’s Rewa district.

It is claimed that it would be the world’s largest solar plant, and the state’s energy minister, Rajendra Shukla, says the plan is to have the plant up and running by March 2017.

Tags: arizona, arizona corporation commission, editors news feed, politics

BY: SWIKAR OLI

It seems India is as sick as we are of hearing about its pollution. Recent studies have linked their pollution to scary health effects and mounting death tolls. While their environmental policies are well overdue, the recent attempts at going clean shows they are heading in the right direction.

The Cochin International Airport (CIAL) is the first airport in the world to run on 100 per cent solar power. The 45 acre facility – the size of about 25 soccer fields – is equipped with 46,000 solar panels and has full energy independence by generating about 52,000 units of electricity daily. The project cost $9.5 million to build.

“When we had realized that the power bill is on the higher side, we contemplated possibilities,” said V.J.Kurian, the energy facility’s managing director, in a recent press release. And numbers show that India will be saving more than just money on its electricity bill. The project is set to reduce 300,000 tons of carbon emissions over the next 25 years, which the report says is akin to planting three million trees.

According to The Telegraph, the airport is the third largest in the country by passengers, and received 6.8 million passengers in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

India is quickly becoming a leader in harnessing solar energy. Its 750 mega-watt (MW) solar power facility in Madhya Pradesh will become the world’s largest, far exceeding the current 392 MW facility set up in California. For perspective, that is a little more than 60 times the power generated by the CIAL.

Sources: tiozambia.com, ecowanderlust.com, wordlypost.in, archivi.diariodelweb.it

Posted September 1, 2015

Latin America Green News is a selection of weekly news highlights about environmental and energy issues in Latin America.

Latin America Green News will be taking a break and resume after the Labor Day Holiday. August 22^nd – September 1, 2015 Climate Change

A strong climate action plan that puts Chile on a trajectory toward 100% renewables by 2050 would save the country billions of dollars, create jobs and reduce pollution-related deaths, according to a new study launched by the Citizen’s Committee on Climate Change, a coalition of Chilean environmental groups. The new study, prepared by the NewClimate Institute, found that switching to 100% renewable energy would help Chile avoid spending $5.3 billion a year on fossil fuels, create 11,000 green jobs and prevent 1,500 premature deaths from outdoor air pollution in Santiago. Chile released a draft climate action plan, or Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), for public comment late last year, but according to the Citizen’s Committee on Climate Change the proposal does not go far enough. The Committee is urging the government to increase the ambition of its climate action plan to achieve the needed transition toward cleaner and low impact energy sources. (Futaleufú Riverkeeper 09/1/2015)

At a roundtable on financial innovation models held this week by Colombia’s Department of National Planning (DNP), Director Simón Gaviria Muñoz, discussed results of a study conducted by DNP, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and advised the country is in danger of losing 0.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) annually through 2100 unless it implements actions to mitigate the effects of climate change. The loss would cost the country approximately USD $1.2 billion annually and wreak havoc on several sectors of the economy as well as the poorest 20 percent of the population. Financially, the agricultural sector will be hit hardest with an estimated 7.4 percent decrease in productivity annually. Transportation, fishing and livestock also follow closely behind with similar negative productivity rates. (Departamento Nacional de Planeacion 8/28/2015)

Rising temperatures caused by climate change and increased industrialization of rural areas in Mexico have forced the country to have to import 80 percent of its legumes. Agricultural areas are becoming unsuitable for production and some are being encroached by growing urban areas leaving only three million of the twenty five million available hectares for legume production. Experts from the International Research Network on Sociourban, Regional and Environmental Problems warn that federal, state and local governments are not doing enough to contain urban sprawl and protect the agricultural sector from the effects of climate change putting in danger food supplies for communities. (El Occidental 8/26/2016)

A new giant has risen in the middle of the Amazon jungle in Brazil seeking to study the effects of climate change in a region that has been dubbed “the earth’s lungs.” The USD $7.4 million, 325 meter-tall orange and white tower, referred to by some as the “Eiffel Tower” of the Amazon, is the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) and it has the unique mission of saving the world. Scientists hope that by closely studying this incredible region which produces half of the world’s oxygen and stabilizes the planet’s climate through carbon capture, they can solve a key piece of the global warming puzzle. Though it won’t start collecting data until later in the year, its strategic location far from civilization is expected to produce relatively pure data. (La Nacion 8/23/2015)

Conservation

Peru and Chile are joining forces against the trafficking of flora and fauna between the two countries. This new collaboration stems from meetings prompted by commitments made during the third meeting of the Committee on Frontier Integration and Development between Peru and Chile last year. Representatives from both countries discussed areas of potential collaboration to protect trafficked wildlife on the border, particularly as they relate to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). (Andina 8/24/2015)

Deforestation

A new monitoring study by the World Wildlife Fund Mexico (WWF) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) revealed that illegal logging degraded 19.9 hectares in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, the highest figure since 2009. According to the study, 96 percent of the illegal logging occurred in the community of San Felipe de los Alzati, one of the 33 communities located within the reserve. Omar Vidal, director of WWF in Mexico, urged the government to work with the community to address the illegal activity and noted the need to increase strategic investments to improve conservation in the area. (Milenio 08/26/2015)

Data from Colombia’s Department of National Planning (DNP) raised concerns over the increase in illegal mining in the country, one of the biggest contributors to the country’s deforestation rate. The practice of illegal mining in the country has become so lucrative that it rakes in profits 3.5 times higher than drug trafficking. The federal government has committed to reducing deforestation form illegal mining from 120 thousand hectares a year to 90 thousand hectares by 2018, a plan which they revealed in their National Development Plan 2014-2018. The Ministry of the Environment has also pledged to crack down on the illicit activity by joining forces with prosecutors and police. (Caracol 08/25/2015)

In 2011, Bryan Ware was enjoying his birthday dinner at a restaurant with his wife and two sons. He was watching his kids draw on the paper tablecloth with crayons their server had given them. A thought struck him.

“I wondered, ‘What happens to these crayons after we leave if we don’t take them with us?'” Ware, who lives in the San Francisco area, told The Mighty.

He later questioned a restaurant employee and was dismayed to learn that every crayon put out on the table had to be thrown away after the table’s customers left – whether it’d been used down to a nub or left completely untouched. Convinced the crayons’ lives didn’t have to end so early, Ware started taking restaurant crayons with him. He made it his mission to come up with a way to get the unwanted crayons into as many children’s hands as possible.

Two years later in 2013, Ware founded The Crayon Initiative, a nonprofit organization that repurposes old unusable crayon wax into new crayons and distributes them to children’s hospitals across California.

First, Ware collects old crayons from restaurants, schools and acquaintances. He separates them by color, melts down the wax and molds the melted wax into new crayons.

Next, Ware puts the melted wax into a one-of-a-kind crayon mold. The mold, which is large and triangular rather than small and circular, was specifically designed with help from an occupational therapist to be easier to grip for small children and kids with special needs.

The company then puts the new crayons in boxes and delivers them to children of all ages who are in the hospital for any reason.

So far, The Crayon Initiative has donated more than 2,000 boxes of crayons to children’s hospitals. In September 2015, Ware will make his first out-of-state delivery to a hospital in New York City. He hopes The Crayon Initiative can continue to expand and bring crayons to kids in hospitals all over the country.

Ware also hopes these crayons can help children in hospitals express themselves artistically, continue normal childhood development and communicate through drawing what they may not be able to say verbally. But more than anything, he hopes he can play some part in making their hospital stays a little easier.

“From my perspective, the biggest goal is to give them an escape,” Ware told The Mighty. “I can’t even fathom what these kids are going through. If these crayons give them an escape from that hospital room for ten minutes, we did our job.”

To learn more about The Crayon Initiative, visit the organization’s website and Facebook page.