According to a new study published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology by MIT researchers, particulate matter of 2.5 micron (aka PM 2.5) emitted by the combustion of fuel is responsible for around 13,000 premature deaths in the UK.
According to a new study published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology by MIT researchers, particulate matter of 2.5 micron (aka PM 2.5) emitted by the combustion of fuel is responsible for around 13,000 premature deaths in the UK.
The next big electric car should be a (another) major contender
The next big electric car should be a (another) major contender
Our friends at Streetsblog and Streetfilms do important work to promote more livable and pedestrian/cyclist-friendly cities across the U.S. and the world. But to keep going, they need your help!
Brammo will officially unveiled its next generation electric motorcycle, the 2012 Empulse and Empulse R, in Los Angeles on May 8, but the company has released some details about what looks to be a kick-ass electric motorcycle.
You know bikes are good. City planners know bikes are good. Yet as soon as cities are successful in getting people biking, a horrible catch-22 is set in motion.
Despite the fact that the number of Mexican undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. is dropping, an anti-immigrant California group incorrectly blames immigrants for increasing carbon emissions in the U.S., leading to “environmental degradation.” Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), which is airing TV ads on MSNBC and other channels to promote the false link between immigration and climate change, bases its research on a flawed report by the nativist Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which is connected to the hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“Concerned about Americans’ huge carbon footprint? Then you should be concerned about immigration,” a man in the ad says in an attempt to scare viewers:
MAN: Immigrants produce four times more carbon emissions in the U.S. than their home countries. [...] Reducing immigration won’t solve global warming, but it is part of the solution.
Watch it here:
The problem? The claim that immigrants have a carbon footprint four times larger in the U.S. comes from a CIS report, which has deeply flawed methodology. The report claims that a person’s CO2 emissions is directly related to his or her personal income — so a person making $110,000 per year will emit 10 percent more carbon than a person who earns $100,000 per year under the report’s methodology. Thus, because the report claims that each Mexican immigrant earns 53.2 percent of the average U.S. resident, it claims that these immigrants must also produce 53.2 percent of the carbon emissions.
But this is simply absurd. If such a relationship actually did exist, that would mean that Mitt Romney, who earned $21.6 million in 2010 — or more than 600 times the average annual income according to the CIS report — also must have produced 600 times the CO2 emissions. That’s enough of a carbon footprint to fuel over 2,200 vehicles or power more than 1,400 homes for an entire year. Not even John McCain owns that many houses.
There’s also robust data showing that immigrants produce less carbon emissions than their native-born citizen counterparts. Brookings found in 2008 that the 10 highest carbon-emitting cities have an average immigrant population below 5 percent, while the cities with the lowest carbon footprint have an average immigrant population of 26 percent. And as CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light told ThinkProgress, even if we could suddenly remove the entire carbon impact created by immigrants, it would only decrease the U.S.’s carbon emissions by 7.32 percent in a good year. Clearly, immigrants are not to blame for the U.S.’s large climate footprint.
Rather than falsely blame immigrants for carbon emissions that have fed global warming, Americans should focus on practical solutions like better land use policies and landscape design to conserve resources. Los Angeles, which has a burgeoning second- and third-generation immigrant population, has seen its water usage decline to a 32-year low despite a population increase of 1 million people. It can be done, but using anti-immigrant sentiment to misplace blame to one section of the population distracts from what the U.S. should be doing to address global warming instead.
Sarah Glynn, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, contributed to this report.
For years we've been promised the next generation of biofuels, made from waste cellulose, but we have yet to see it replace corn ethanol. Why is cellulosic ethanol moving so slowly? Matt Merritt of POET answers.
Here are some highlights of FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference, which wrapped up yesterday. I’m co-chair of the event, which brought about 300 corporate leaders, environmentalists, investors and academics to Laguna Niguel, CA, for three whirlwind days of talk about how business can help solve the world’s big environmental problems:
Alan Mulally at FORTUNE Brainstorm Green
The trouble with electric cars: Batteries remain heavy and very expensive, adding about $12,000 to $15,000 to the cost of a Ford Focus that would otherwise be priced at about $22,000, said Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally. During a q-and-a with the audience, he said:
…a battery for a hybrid vehicle is around a 2 kilowatt hour battery, weighs around 100 pounds, maybe around $2,000. And as you move to a plug-in hybrid size, say around 8 to 10 kilowatt hours, then that weight moves up to around 300 pounds and the cost is around $7,000 to $8,000. And then when you move into an all-electric vehicle the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds — some people actually are taking our seats to be able to carry the battery around, not us — and also they’re around $12,000 to $15,000….So, you can see why the economics are what they are.
Of course, drivers who pay $39,200 for a Focus EV will save a lot of money on fuel during the life of the car, depending on gas prices and how much they drive. That’s a reminder of another dilemma facing potential electric-car buyers. Ford says its Focus can go up to 76 miles on a full charge, so it’s ideal for people (like me) who don’t drive much. But the less you drive, the longer it takes to recover the higher up-front costs of the car in the form of lower operating costs.
Even so, sales of hybrids and electrics were the fastest-growing segment in the U.S. auto market in the first quarter. They accounted for less than 5% of vehicles sold but Mulally said their share will grow as battery prices come down.
“We see this as continually growing,” he said. “This is a long-term journey.”
Lew Hay
Worries about wind: If Congress allows a production tax credit for wind-power generation to expire at the end of the year, as planned, new construction of wind farms “will go to virtually zero next year,” said Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy. Eric Spiegel, the president and CEO of Siemens Corp., told me that the dilly-dallying over the production tax credit had already slowed orders dramatically for the company’s US-made wind turbines. Siemens is tryingto sell turbines to Canada and Mexico to avoid laying off workers at its three US-based factories.
Letting the tax break expire would be dumb. The US will install about 10 gigawatts of low-carbon wind energy this year–about 35% of all new power generation, even against a backdrop of dirt-cheap prices for natural gas. The wind industry has been growing for about a decade. GE has invested about $1 billion in wind in the last 10 years, said Stephen Bolze, president and CEO the company’s power and water group.
Until the US enacts a carbon cap or tax to promote low-carbon energy, production tax credits for wind and solar are vital to keep those industries alive.
Why food costs need to rise: I’d guess that food-industry leaders Greg Page, Larry Pope and Gary Hirshberg don’t agree on a lot but they all said that making agriculture more sustainable will require consumers to pay more for what we eat.
Page, who is CEO of agribusiness giant Cargill, said: “We try to get people to think about price as one of the real necessary elements for sustainability.” Consumers, for example, may have to pay more for products containing soy or palm oil as Cargill and its suppliers produces those commodities in ways that protect rainforest lands and generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Pope, who is CEO of Smithfield Foods, the US’s largest hog producer, said Smithfield will spend about $400 million over the next decade to improve the quality of life of the hogs in its supply chain, and improve environmental protection. “The industry proceeded to call me a traitor, but we moved forward,” he said. Speaking to environmentalists in the crowd, he said: “People have thought I’m more on your side than on our side, but it’s the right business decision to make.”
Gary Hirshberg
Hirshberg, the chairman of Stonyfield Farm, said his organic products costs more because they are better for the environment and for the health of farmers and consumers. “There are 10,000 reasons to buy organic and one not to,” he said. “That’s price.” It’s time, he said, to “banish the myth of cheap.”
The price isn’t right: It’s not just food, of course, that’s mispriced when farmers externalize their costs in the form of water pollution or GHG emissions. Getting prices to reflect the full costs of all the things we consume was a theme that, not surprisingly, ran throughout Brainstorm Green.
Water, for example, that water is heavily subsidized in many places and not priced at all in others. Mark Tercek, the CEO of the Nature Conservancy, said: “Because water has been free, we’ve had some crazy uses of water in agriculture where the wrong things have been grown in the wrong places.”
During a panel titled “What Is Nature Worth?” economist Pavan Sukhdev of Yale and author Jared Diamond talked about how to protect the trillions of dollars of tangible economic value in the services provided by nature, which include cleaner water and air, pollination of plants, medicines, etc. Sukhdev said: “We use nature because it’s valuable but we lose nature because it’s free.”
As always, I left Brainstorm Green with my head buzzing with as many questions as answers.
Even after interviewing Andrew Liveris, the charismatic CEO of Dow Chemical, I’m not sure what to think about the company. Dow has a checkered past (Agent Orange, napalm) and it makes controversial products like the widely-used weed-killer 2,4-D. But the company’s future will be all about sustainability, Liveris told me, as Dow develops breakthrough products like solar shingles and lightweight materials for cars and trucks. His passion for science, R&D and American manufacturing jobs was impressive.
Listening to Shell’s Russ Ford and Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund talk about natural gas has just about persuaded me that fracking, if properly regulated, can be done safely. But I’m worried by the cheerleading (including some by FORTUNE) for natural gas, which is, after all, a fossil fuel. Saying that natural gas is better than coal is faint praise, as Mike Brune of the Sierra Club pointed out.
Cathy Zoi
Meantime, it’s hard to know whether we are moving closer to or farther away from getting a desperately needed national energy policy. John Podesta of Center for American Progress, former EPA chief William Reilly of TPG Capital and Cathy Zoi of Silver Lake Kraftwerk joined in a great panel about the politics of climate and energy, and all said there is at least a least a possibility of a bipartisan “grand bargain” after the election that would include a mix of federal spending cuts, curbs on entitlements and tax reform and simplication that could include a carbon tax. If only.
As co-chair of Brainstorm Green, I’m obviously biased … but it felt like there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism (and, of course, brainpower) at the confab. I met some fascinating people who I’ll be writing about in the weeks ahead. Thanks to all of you who joined us. If you’re someone who plans way ahead, we expect to be back in Laguna Beach on April 29 to May 1, 2013.
Interviewing Andrew Liveris of Dow
All photos by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Green. Many more here.
The value of the international waste-to-energy market could reach $ 80 billion by 2022 - as analysts forecast accelerated growth for the waste sector over the next decade.
According to a new report from Pike Research, demand for thermal and biological waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies will reach at least $6.2bn in 2012 and grow to $29.2bn by 2022.
Population growth, rapid urbanisation, rising levels of affluence and resource scarcity will help fuel this demand, according to researchers. With China already scaling up capacity, growth for EfW is expected to shift away from Europe to Asia Pacific in the coming years.
“With many countries facing dramatic population growth, waste-to-energy is re-establishing itself as an attractive technology option to promote low-carbon growth in the crowded renewable energy landscape,” said senior analyst Mackinnon Lawrence.
More than 800 thermal EfW plants currently operate in nearly 40 countries worldwide, but these facilities treated just 11% of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated worldwide in 2011 compared to the 70% that was landfilled.
In 2011, the world generated an estimated 2bn tonnes of MSW and these arisings are predicted to grow much higher.
By 2020, the report forecasts that WTE facilities will treat at least 261m tonnes of waste annually with a total estimated output of 283 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity and heat generation – compared to 221TWh in 2010.
Under a more optimistic scenario, EfW could potentially treat 396m tonnes of MSW a year, producing 429TWh of power. High upfront capital costs and attractive economics for landfilling, however, represent persistent barriers to more widespread adoption of EfW.
While combustion technologies continue to lead the market, advanced thermal treatment technology deployments such as pyrolysis are expected to pick up as diminishing landfill capacity improves WTE economics.
Allen & York specialise in waste jobs, current waste job opportunities include:
It's a daunting reality, yet one that's been years in the making. And it's a scenario that's shaping up from the wind-swept coasts of California to the solar rooftops of New Jersey. The renewables industries — all of them — are not only approaching a subsidy cliff. They already have one foot dangling over the edge.
While in Vermont last month, President Obama called for a "doubling down" in support of clean energy. Prior to taking the stage before thousands of Vermonters, he was introduced by Jeanne Morrissey, the head of a local contracting company. Most spectators were unaware that one of the last times Jeanne spoke in public she stood before a
The Renaul Twizy could, says Robert Llewellyn, be disruptive technology that transforms how we think about cars.
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